


Life makes love seem hard

by SingerOnTheRise



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 2000's, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark Past, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Growing Up, Psychological Trauma, Sister-Sister Relationship, Slow Burn, no powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingerOnTheRise/pseuds/SingerOnTheRise
Summary: Good girls did not attract the attention of their psychotic stepfather, they did not leave their aunt in anger for any reason, they were not hated by their half-sister and they did not receive the contempt of their father. Good girls went unnoticed in the sights of society, everything she needed most. El Hopper, Jane Ives (or whatever name she assumed for herself) had to be a good girl.The plan was not to arrest anyone, keep her head down until high school was over, and she'd be free to go wherever the wind carried her. It was a good plan, that's until Mike Wheeler and his damn cute freckles kicked in and ruined everything El had planned.





	1. Prologue: A brief glimpse into her future

**Author's Note:**

> Why not write an AU where El has no powers and is a legitimate daughter of Hopper and Terry; the deceased daughter of Hopper is alive and Hopper is a slightly negligent father with its young daughter. Of course, here are some basic cliches that can never change from my perspective: Mike is a lovely nerd, Joyce is the best mother of all and Max as badass as ever.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the idea as much as I do.

**17 years**

_ She would not say falling in love, giving herself to Michael Wheeler was a mistake. No. It was far from that. Falling in love with Michael Wheeler was one of the best things in her world, the feeling he had aroused in her had been one of the few things that made her feel like someone ... Somebody important, someone who was still alive after all. _

_ Looking closely, of course, it would be hard not to have fallen in love with Mike, but even more difficult than resisting that feeling would be to forget, to erase his existence. Forgetting him, the boy with messy hair and freckles would be extremely distressing, but necessary for both of them. However much she might have come to think of it, what was between them could not go beyond that, a high school romance. She and Mike were too different to be able to hook up one of those cute novels in which the girl and the boy fall in love with high school, go to college together and then marry and live happily ever after. _

_ This thing was not for her. She was too wrong to have a happy ending like that with Mike and he, more than anyone, deserved a happy ending. _

_ She sped up the bike, not caring what the crap on the boards said about the high speed on that road - in fact, the warning signs were mere blurs inconvenient to her vision, but, in the end, everything was a blur to those eyes so filled with insistent tears. _

_ A sob escaped her lips, body involuntarily moving forward and hands and arms momentarily losing control of the handlebars. This would be nothing, really nothing, were it not for the fact that, after the momentary loss of control of the handlebars, the bike had not been diverted to the opposite track. _

_ It does not happen like in the movies, everything in slow motion and with a little music of tension in the background. No. Everything is too fast, too fast for her to sue. In a minute she is sobbing deliriously and the next minute a light comes out of nowhere and then... Then nothing. _

_ And then the darkness of uncertainty comes to El Jane Hopper, taking her out of the real world and taking her away. _


	2. Following the flow of the waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor arrives at Hawkins to live with her biological father and sister. None of the three are exactly happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first of all: Hello, you guys! Thank you for the kudos. This really made me happy. Secondly: I really was not in my plans to post this story yet. Seriously. I was planning to post after the third season's release, but, as you can see, I could not stand it. Blame the anxiety for July 4 because of this anticipation.
> 
> The idea for this fanfic? Well, for the most part, I do not even know where it came from, now, the part of writing them growing up, having a childhood, adolescence and maybe an adult life came from the series itself.
> 
> Wow, I'm totally freaking out with the little spoilers I got from the new season. A real madness. It did not help much in my madness to Netflix launch here in my country an app with unseen footage of S3. Like, hey, Netflix, you're beautiful, you hit it right.
> 
> I hope you like it  
> Xoxox

##  Following the flow of the waves

**12 years**

Accustomed Chicago’s rush and even to be suspicious of her own shadow, she climbed out of the train into the only two baggage with which she had embarked: a large backpack with all the belongings she had managed to get together before leaving, and the violin case that had belonged to her mother. It did not matter how visibly different that city was from Chicago or how difficult it would be for someone to come here to try to steal her stuff - it was her stuff, all she had of more significant, and the paranoia of losing it all wasn't a good thing for her, for the mind of  _ a girl like her. _

She was a strange sight for the few adults who were passing in the train station at that moment. Small, almost rickety, misfit bib, a gray sweater that had little effect against the cold wind, a pair of shabby all stars and unconventional hair for girls on her age. They, the adults, probably thought she was some kind of lost child or something like this. She wasn't. Eleanor Jane Hopper knew very well where she was and what she was doing here.

Firming the weight of the backpack on her back and making sure the violin case was very secure, she walked through the train station with her eyes intent. There were adults over there, she realized, but none with the features that had been passed to her. There were women in tight, smoking clothes, not very nice-looking men, but there was no one tall, middle-aged, with mustaches and police chief clothes there.

_ He did not come and get me,  _ she thought to herself. Eleanor wasn't surprised or sad about that. She had not had much hope of Hopper picking her up at the train station as he'd promised Kali on the phone and she was right to do that since, of course, he had not gone there in the first place.

With the only free hand she had, she took the crumpled paper Kali had pushed there earlier and the money she had provided in the case of an emergency. The address of Hopper's house and his perfect family and enough money to pay for a taxi there.  _ Gotcha! It seems like you're not going to run away from me so easily, dear father. _

"You have a lot of money there, boy! A lot of money for an unaccompanied child."

She spun under the heels of the all-star, wide-eyed immediately assessing the stranger who clearly spoke to her. He was a tall man who had been on the train since the Chicago boarding, staring at her with a strange look on his face. He wasn't one of Hawkins's quiet residents; he was a big city resident, ready to scam someone - to scam her, more specifically.

"What is it, buddy?" The man forces a friendly smile that Eleanor knows well is fake. "Lost your tongue? You don’t speak English?"

"Piss off, jerk!" 

The stranger blinked, shocked at the answer and her voice. He, just as other people had already done, was taking her for a boy because of her short hair. Stupid. There was a universal rule dictating that girls should wear long hair?

"Are you a girl? Well, that makes things even easier." The smile became less friendly and more dangerous. "Give me the fucking money, brat, or I’ll hurt you!"

Her foot is over his, hard, even before clear reasoning can pierce the mind of either. An involuntary reaction of self-defense that would make Axel highly proud.

She left the train station, bewildered. Stepping on the man's foot had been a good escape tactic, but not good enough to slow him down for long. She looked around and then found exactly what she needed: a police car around the park in front of the train station. She runs to the car, practically throwing herself at it to catch the driver's attention.

"Do you want to die, kid?" A thick voice coughs at her.

"There's a strange guy chasing me." She talks out loud at the window so the guy inside can hear her and pay attention. "He chased me from Chicago and now... Now he's chasing me here. Help me, please."

Almost hitting her in the process, the man opens the door of the car with a jerk and jumps out. He is tall, very tall, and wears rumpled beige clothes, scarlet brown hair and mustache, and not that she notices in haste and fear, but there is a police badge shining on his chest.

The man looks at her from head to toe, blue eyes peering at her for so long that it gives her an unpleasant sensation.

"Where is the stalker?" The man inquires authoritatively, chest stewed.

She turned her finger and immediately pointed to the entrance of the train station. The Chicago man stood there looking paler than a polar bear, eyes fixed on her.

"That one over there." The stalker ran back to the station as she closed her mouth. "Or at least it was him."

"Get in the car, I'll be right back!" The man commands and when she stands still, staring at him, he rolls his eyes open the car door and forces her inside. "Stay here. I don't want guys like this walking in my city."

Eleanor doesn't really want to get in the stranger's car, but when she finds herself confined by the metal doors and the blurred glass windows, the only option she ends up having on hand is to do a checkup. If that man were a stalker or a psychopath, in his car would certainly have some clue there.

Taking care to divert from the ashtray that was precariously posted on top of the dashboard of the car, she opened the glove compartment and went immediately toward the wallet, completely ignoring the money there and focusing on what seemed personal. The first thing that attracted her attention was the small picture that was there: the tall man surrounded by his family - a woman with a happy wrinkled face, a boy, a brown-haired teenager, and a beautiful blonde teenager. A happy family.

Moving on to the next personal item, she found an old ID card and a police badge. A worn-out photo of the man at a younger ager and less sullen face. Born in Hawkins, 45 years old, man (quite obvious it), name... Oh! That, yes, was very interesting. His name is James Alistair Hopper.

The car door opens abruptly, causing her to drop the wallet and all content within it. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!

"You should not be messing with other people's things." The man, Jim, scolds amusingly. "You said you came from Chicago, did not you?"

"That's right."

"You came to do what in Hawkins? You're too young to travel alone."

Usually, those questions would fuel her distrust, doubts about the man's interests, but since she already knew who he was and what she worked with, there was certainly nothing to worry about. He was just doing his job.

She lowered her head. Why could not he just make it easy for her? It was just to join one more one and see that she was his daughter, the girl he had probably come to pick up at the train station. It wasn't like a lot of twelve-year-old girls were traveling alone on a train leaving Chicago and going to an inner city, right?

"I came to live with my father." She picked up the address again and handed to him, still not lifting her head. "I think you know where that address is, right?"

"Let me see... Oh!"

She blushed at the sound of shock that Jim Hopper let slip. He did not expect her, the girl who had run out of the station, to be the same girl he'd come for.

_ Or maybe he just did not expect her to actually show up there in Hawkins, a small part of him believing that the letter written by such a Kali Prasad was a joke of lousy taste and that the child... His daughter who lived in another city and was rarely recognized as coming to live with him, but of course these were her conjectures: she would never know if it was that or anything. _

"Jane?"

She lifted her head, finally staring into his eyes. The unbelief in his voice isn't greater than that which is in his face.

"Actually." She licked her lips nervously, unable to sketch any expression that could be catchy. "It’s Eleanor Jane Ives Hopper, but I prefer the first name."

"Right, hmm... Eleanor."

"Exactly." She swallowed, uncomfortable with the inaction of the man she was supposed to see as her father, but only as a parent. "I like being called Eleanor."

It was a lie. She particularly had no preference for one name or another, at least not before. Now it was certainly most appropriate and also what she preferred to join. It was better this way, from being Jane and becoming once and for all Eleanor Hopper, a child without a past, who could live without shadows behind her; that was what Kali had told her and Kali knew everything, no one could deny it.

"I, uh... I should hug you or something? I mean, you're my daughter..."

"No need" She spoke in an effort to put an end to the bad weather that was beginning to set in the air. God, was he really asking her that? It was a bit outrageous. "I don't like hugs."

He did not need to know that was a lie, told just to make him feel a little less uncomfortable, that she actually loved hugs, needed a hug, and had believed he would hug her. Her father, the man who was supposed to love her, did not need to know why he was already frightened and too dislocated.

Jim Hopper seems to be in heaven with her reassurance, making it clear that the offer had been out of the mouth, out of education rather than out of desire. It hurt her, yes, but not as much as she should. Never in twelve years has he bothered to go and see how she was or at least call, so it was more than expected that he would not hug her.

"So..." She held out the word, not knowing what to say. "I'm sorry for being a nuisance to you and your family."

The man shakes at her words.

"No, no, kid, you're not being a nuisance at all..." He choked on his own words, intent on undoing a possible bad image. "Anyway, if you can go to the passenger seat so we can go to my... Our house, anyway, I'd be grateful."

Trying to appear calm and mature enough for her father she has just met, Eleanor squirms until she can fit herself and the few belongings she had in the back seats of the car. She curled up in the back seats, practically lying down - all to avoid the glares of the townsfolk.

With her not being one of the most talkative people and Jim Hopper clearly immersed in thoughts too confused to be kept away from his increasingly serious expression, the path to the new home is relatively silent. It isn't a relatively time-consuming course, thirty minutes clocked, and Eleanor takes the time and silence to study the landscape.

The houses of the city are for the most part very similar in structure, only their color changing and this doesn't deserve much attention to her. Commercial establishments are far more scarce than Chicago's are still open, but given the fact that there are almost no people on the streets at that time (Holy shit, it's only seven-forty-five at night), Eleanor understands that this is more for some kind of rule of practice than for some citizen going there to buy something.

Soon empty streets, identical houses, and ghostly shopping out of sight and the road is surrounded by tall, charming trees. Eleanor has never had much contact with nature, so those gigantic and green structures are simply the most interesting thing she has ever had the opportunity to see up close.

"Is there any animal in this forest?" Rested both hands on the car window. "Wolf, bear, deer or wild coyote?"

"There are enough animals for you to stay away from it."

Eleanor winced at the answer. Jim probably did not intend to sound so rude (or maybe he did), but he had sounded so.

"You're the boss." She whispered softly.

"Listen, I did not..."

"No, no, no, that's fine, sir. No forest.”

"Eleanor..." Hopper snorted, resigned. "Come on in. We're home, welcome home."

She studied the house that stretched between the trees, curious to know where she would be trapped for the next few years. It was a beautiful house, almost flat, painted white and with roof and white beams, large garden and front yard adorned with an old tire swing. Interesting.

"Come on, Eleanor?"

She hesitated for a moment, not knowing what was waiting for her inside the beautiful-looking house, and then she picked it up and escorted Hopper inside. It was inevitable to get in there, she could not spend the rest of the night standing there, especially with the cold that was forming.

The house was as cozy on the inside as it was outside: beautiful, painted with colors neither so vibrant nor so sad, rich in furniture and also it smells. A real home.

Curious, she scanned the place with her eyes and then instinctively retreated when she was faced with several pairs of curious eyes. Boys at her age, teenagers at the beginning of their homonym stage and a small woman. Many people, unknown people.

"Guys, do you remember what we talked earlier?" Hopper, behind her, asks for confirmation or reaction.

One of the teenage girls, a blonde girl who is casually thrown on the floor, laughs scornfully but doesn'thing.

"Is there a problem, Sarah?" Eleanor's father seriously questions, jaw closed. He seems to be the kind that is severe with everyone.

She hoped that the teenager, Sarah, would back down in the face of the questioning, where there is a clear reprimand, but that isn't exactly what happens - Sarah stands up from her position and, flashing her height above average for her age, chin raised and chest growing stewed.

Eleanor shakes her head slightly at the attitude, not totally disapproving as a natural instinct but rather as a survival instinct. As wild as a person may be in his essence, it is necessary to know the moment of retreat.

"The problem here is clear, isn't it?" She spits words out like a curse.

"No, Sarah, it's not clear. Could you clarify this for me?" Hopper imposes his haughty stance above that which the teenager demonstrates. "I guess I'm not smart enough."

"Jim" A small woman, whom she takes for being the wife, says coming out of her place among the boys on the big couch and moving forward to rest her hand on her husband's arm.

"What you have not been and isn't even now is respectful enough!" Sarah shakes her hands, showing something that isn't in sight for Eleanor. "First you betray my mother and now bring this weird one for our home as if it were completely normal."

"More respect to me and to your sister, Sarah! I am still your father and you must respect me!"

" **SHE ISN’T MY SISTER!** You are not respecting me by bringing this bastard here, are you? Forcing me to share a room with her?!"

Like the other spectators, she watches the unfolding of the discussion with wide-eyed, shocked eyes. Clearly, it had been a bad idea to go there, Kali had been wrong about it.

Helpless, she gathered the belongings with which she had clung all the way and stepped back until she had passed through the door she had passed through. She did not want to be there, she would rather stay in Chicago than go to live in Hawkins and the fact that a fight over her arrival wasn't exactly an incentive for a possible stay. It would be so easy to run into the woods, take the freeway, and ask someone to take her to Chicago again, to pretend nothing had happened...

No. That couldn’t happen. Staying in Hawkins was the best option, at least until She could stand on her own. Hawkins wasn't the best of the towns, the people in her new home did not like her much, but it was all so much better than going back to hell from where she had been taken. Much better in every way. The hatred of such a Sarah? She could handle it. The distance from Hopper? She could handle it. She could handle a lot, less with what had pushed her to that end-of-the-world little town.

She sat down on the porch stairs, her suitcase tossed aside as she firmly clasped the violin case. With her eyes closed to deepen her sensations, she breathed in the scent of the violin and immediately felt a brief sense of peace. Wood, cherry blossom and a light touch of some Latin herb whose name she did not know. The smell of her mother.

She stroked the object carefully, emotionally. The tears were already beginning to sprout, but she refused to recognize their existence, that weakness so evident.

_ "Siento su falta, mama." _

"That's Spanish, isn't it?" Someone behind her asks with excitement. "You just said it, did not you? Cool!"

She choked, startled, turning to see who had said it.

The four boys who were in the living room were now there, piled up in a protective pile, standing at the foot of the door, waiting for her answer in anticipation.

"Yes, it was Spanish." Frowned, defensive.

The eyes of one of the boys, the one who is more in front of the group and who has curly hair, shine.

"Awesome! Will, your new sister knows how to speak Spanish, maybe she can help us in Mr. Ramirez's class." The boy says in jubilation. "That's so cool."

"It is really cool." The younger boy, probably Will, answers. "So... What's your name?"

He wiped away the trail of tears that had settled on his cheeks, chest stewed.

"Eleanor Jane Ives Hopper" Pronounced the full name, the one that was on the birth certificate and any official document inside the suitcase. "Eleanor Hopper, for short."

"That doesn't mean much, huh? It still sounds large to me. It's cool, but it looks very serious."

_ "That's an old woman’s name!" _

She glanced up between the two boys who had spoken, focusing mainly on what had been said last worlds. He was medium in stature, with beautiful olive skin, an austere expression, angular features, good clothes and... A bandana. Regardless, nothing changed the impression he had just impressed for her.

The other boy, who spoke first, hits the elbow on the boy's ribs.

"That's not something you tell a girl, Lucas!"

"Fuck off, Mike! I was being honest." Lucas replies, unaware of his grossness. "You don't mind, do you?"

She puffed out her chest, her heart bleeding with both his words and her longing.

"No problem." Because this was just the name of her grandmother, the name of the lady whom she had loved with all her might until she found her dead in bed on a rainy morning, a victim of a heart attack. Why could have a problem? "What are your names?"

"Dustin Henderson, the bard, at your disposal!"

"Will Byers. I think I’m your stepbrother now."

"Lucas Sinclair."

“I’m Michael Wheeler. Mike for short. I don't like being called Michael, only my mother and strangers call me that and as you are my friend's new stepsister then you will not be a stranger, you'll be our friend, or at least I think you want to be our friend... Do you want to be our friend? I mean, it would be totally understandable if you don't want to, we’re nerds and you definitely don’t look be a nerd, but if you want to be our friend it's going to be really cool ‘cause... "

"Slow down, Mike!" Lucas slaps the boy on the back, making him choke. "Stop talking and breathe."

Tilted her head to the side, studying the four boys who had stood before her.

Dustin Henderson is clearly the most electric in the group. With his curly hair and mouth that even being strangely toothless seems something interesting in him, he exudes passion and makes it clear when classifying as bard his nerd nature. He seemed friendly enough to show the school to a new student and also vulnerable enough to take a beating of bullies.

Will Byes, Eleanor's new stepbrother, is almost as small as she, smooth brown hair falling over his eyes and lean body structure. He seems to be very more receptive than Sarah, but maybe that's why it wasn't his mother who had an extramarital affair that resulted in a bastard child. Anyway, he looked like a kind person, who preferred to stay in the space itself and who respected the space of other people.

Lucas Sinclair seemed to be the least open of the four boys; even now after the introductions he still seemed frowning, face closed and lips closed in a straight line. Olive skin, dark eyes, and a very appropriate war bandanna, ‘cause, if anyone had any say, it was clear that the boy was ready to start a war with anyone who dared to get in the way of him - she is the main focus of it now.

_ The poor boy probably had a crush on Sarah or was simply naturally suspicious of people. Eleanor could not suppress him for that, could she? The world was horrible, so more than logically it was necessary to be cautious. _

And then there was  **him** , the boy who had tried to praise her name before Lucas began his criticisms: Michael 'Mike' Wheeler. Not that she was prepared to talk about it aloud to anyone, but he was cute. Very cute. Tall, very tall even, dark hair falling over brown eyes, angular, pale face painted by endless freckles. His cheeks flushed, flushed, in the light of the porch, giving hints of the embarrassment he felt for playing the fool before. Definitely cute.

_ The desire to ignore this small part of her mind is latent, this little thing that seeps into her mind, but she can not help noticing how handsome that boy looks in the light of the porch and the stars. Pretty. She would write in the diary, someone who she would take the last name and try to match with her own name to see how beautiful it would be if they were married one day, but all this, only if she was a romantic, which wasn't the case. Eleanor Jane Ives Hopper wasn't a romantic girl, she did not believe in novels or nonsense of the sort. _

"Sorry" Mike Wheeler blushes softly, dark eyes dancing restlessly. "I can... I get a little excited sometimes."

"No, that's me. What's got into you, man?" Dustin answers with a knowing smile on his lips.

"I don't know..."

"Fine, it wasn'thing." Eleanor interrupts them before a discussion can begin. Sarah and Hopper were enough. "It's a pleasure to meet you, really."

The boys nod, heads bobbing and hair flying to every angle. Even Lucas Sinclair, with his pose, doesn't seem to be very good with girls. It seems to be the first real interaction, which she doesn't find strange because, judging the facts, they are also the first boys she really talks to.

"About your name... What do you think we shortened it? A nickname?" Mike suggests approaching her more cautiously and being accompanied by others. "You know, Eleanor's a little too big a name.

She blinked at him, the closeness giving her a vision of how careful he was. He probably came from a caring family, he had a mother and father who loved him.

"I'm not good with these things."

"Alright, we're good, are not we, guys?" He tries to encourage his friends and snorts when none of them shows the same excitement. "What about... Calling You El? Short for Eleanor? Does it sound cool?"

Gaining a nickname has never been her intention and she's still one foot behind when she sees Lucas Sinclair's mocking expression. A simple childish grimace makes her make the decision.

"Sounds really cool." She agreed with a smile and did not lose the way the boy blushed. "Thank you so much, Mike."

"You're welcome, El. I mean, you're always welcome for anything."

Smiled sideways.

"I guess the same goes for you." Turned to the other boys. "For all of you."

"Eleanor?"

She jumped to her feet, a traveling bag and a violin case in her hand, ready for anything. For a scold, a sequence of path indications or even an expulsion.

Looking tired, exhausted, Jim Hopper was standing in the doorway with Sarah and a small woman. Sarah, with her watery blue eyes, did not look very happy.

"Sarah has to tell you a few things, don't you, Sarah?"

The blonde snorted, brushing her hair stubbornly.

" **Sarah** !"

_ "I'm sorry for everything, I did not want to be rude to my new dear little sister." _

With Mike Wheeler acting like a wall between her and Sarah, El stands on tiptoe and stares at the teen. She did not seem sorry about anything, but it wasn't as if El had been deluded by it.

"No problems."

_ But, of course, there would be problems. Sarah was obviously genius and that would be a big problem for El who would have to take patience from the depths of herself to not lose her temper and give Sarah what she deserve. _

Sarah goes with it, running into the house and leaving the two grown-ups behind.

"Sarah did not very well accept the fact that you need to share a room, my dear." The little woman talks and it seems she's being squeezed rather than talking. "And we don't have a guest room that we can allocate to you either."

Waited for what would come next because she certainly had what to expect from such a statement and it wasn't a good thing. Eleanor wasn't silly and could tell when a person wanted to give her good and bad news and at that moment the adult's faces in her new family were the same face the man from the hospital had done when she went to inform her about the that had happened to Terry.

"So... You see, we don't have many options here." Hopper still looks about to vomit. "The closest of a guest room we have is the attic of the house."

"We'll sort this out, darling, Sarah will soon change her mind, but for now..."

"It's all right." Repeated what seemed to be the twentieth time that day. Nothing was fine, but nobody needed to know that. "don't worry about anything."

Sarah would not change her mind, that was one of the new certainties of her life. Eleanor had already realized that Sarah wasn't the type to accept change and that despite her father's reprimand and the various reprimands that might come up, she would do anything to torment El's life.

The two adults stared at her and the boys, neither of them believing she was peaceful about the news.

"Have you had dinner, dear?" The little woman tries to change the subject, uncomfortable. "I have a chicken soup that you..."

Her stomach rumbled, but pride spoke louder. She wasn't yet ready to eat the food from that house, coming from the hands of people who were clearly upset by her arrival. They needed some time to adjust and so did she.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to go to sleep." She simulated a false yawn that. "I am a bit tired."

The mortified expression of the two adults immediately changes - Hopper having the audacity to seem guilty and the small woman looking sympathized, almost as if he were looking at one of those dirty or hungry orphan children, but still proud enough to deny any offer of food.

Hopper, her father, doesn't take her to the attic about which he had mentioned. When they enter the house again, he sits in the living room, surrounded by the four nerdy boys and the teenagers who are left, while the little woman guides her up the stairs. Eleanor... El could not blame Hopper for not wanting to accompany her; she was a thorn in his side, the girl who had come to ruin the perfect, well-structured life he had built in Hawkins.

She followed the small woman without paying attention to any detail until she came upon a wide white door that gave the view of a huge room painted in pink.

"Come on, baby, this is your sister's room." The little woman urges her to continue the walk and El doesn't hesitate to do so. "We're almost there, okay?"

The two arrive at the end of the corridor, to a tiny staircase that would probably lead to the place defined to her. Using the logic that there was nowhere else to go and that this was the last stop, she climbed the small staircase and without waiting for permission or order opened the door that awaited her at the bottom of the steps.

One thing she had to admit: to an attic until that place was in good condition. There was no mess there, no clutter or heaps of boxes, no sign of dust, dirt, or rotting wood to the point of precariousness and danger. It was a small room whose walls were white, furnished only with a bed that had an iron headboard, a desk and a chair whose white paint was peeling, and a visibly ornate red armchair. There was also a window there, quite small and hidden by a curtain of ruffles - a vague attempt to make the environment cozier and perhaps more feminine.

_ A very conducive place to escape in the middle of the night or to allow someone to creep in there quietly and without the consent of the other inhabitants of the house, great enough to hide from the world and the problems caused by it. _

The small woman cleared her throat, drawing her attention back to herself.

"I know it's not much, but we can make some changes later, until Sarah changes her mind and accepts you in her bedroom." She speaks softly, almost motherly. "What do you think of painting the room? I can arrange that."

"That's fine, ma'am." El sat on the bed, feet hovering a few inches from the floor. "You don't need to do anything, really."

"Don't call me that. Ma'am. My name is Joyce, my dear." The woman offers, a sweet voice. "And you are Eleanor. Listen, honey, you must have realized by now that your father isn't a very caring man, but... But have patience, he really likes you."

_ Perceptibly, _ she thought of throwing herself into bed. Hopper had never visited her in Chicago, but to his credit, she had not lived in Chicago for a long time - specifically, just seven years ago, she had settled there. Terry Ives had fled to Buenos Aires to her mother's house as soon as she had discovered her pregnancy and had not returned to Chicago until her daughter was about six years old. Eleanor's mother had even warned Jim about her existence, but, according to Terry herself, he had never been very interested.

Always impulsive, having patience wasn't her specialty, her move was more to ignore and pretend not to mind, just to follow the flow of the head waves low - one of several teachings of the great philosopher Kali Prasad.

Realizing that she will not reply, Joyce moves with discomfort.

"We already enrolled you in middle school, dear, you start tomorrow. I... I come to call you for coffee and bath." She speaks awkwardly. "I... I'll let you sleep, okay?"

It was expected that the woman, Joyce, would leave the room immediately said that, but this isn't what is done. The woman approaches and, surprising her to death, kisses her forehead.

"Good evening, little bird." The woman caresses her hair carefully, almost lovingly. "I'm so glad you're here."

She left the woman, a thank-you for the lodging stuck in the throat by the affectionate nickname pronounced. If only she knew...

El rolled-in fetal position, the images of the last night in Chicago coming back to memory as a slap in her face.

_ "I don't want to go! I want to live here, with you!" _

_ Kali folds her arms over her chest, expression impassive under her black makeup blurred by the sweat of a long night of work. Of course, she wasn't going to back down, that wasn't her style, but trying did not cost anything. _

_ "You have a family, a father, and a sister. The more viable you are to move in with them." She speaks the words that had already become commonplace in dialogues between the two. "You'll see, it's going to be all right there." _

_ Quickly, perhaps fearing that the other would push her away from her, Jane's thin arms cling tightly to Kali's neck as she succumbs to a crisis of tears so violent that it scares both viewers. _

_ "I don't want, Kal... I want to stay here... I want to stay with you in Chicago... I swear I’ll be behavior, that I do what you want, but you don't leave me here..." She sobs hard, small body convulsing in the process. "You promised never to leave me..." _

_ "I'm not leaving you, canary, but I can not stay with you when your biological father is still alive and can give you everything you need." _

_ Carefully not to be abrupt or to use too much force, Kali pushes Eleanor away from her body and forces she to look into her eyes. _

_ "We already talk, don't we? You know this is necessary." She rests one forehead on the other. "You'll always be my little sister, regardless of distance, and I'll always come and visit you." _

_ "I want to live with you!" _

_ "If you continue with that thought when you're eighteen, you'll be most welcome to live with me, okay? I promise." There is a pause, the inevitability of the farewell becoming less and less ignorable. "Be a good girl, canary, don't attract too much attention to yourself. We both don't want this, right?" _

_ Grudgingly, still annoyed at being abandoned at Hawkins, Jane nods. _

_ "Okay, so, what are you going to do at Hawkins, at your father's house?" _

_ "I'll be a good girl." She recited the epithet the two of them had rehearsed several times. "I'm going to keep my head down, I'm not going to pull fights or attract too much attention to me." _

_ "That's right, that's my canary." _

El buried her face in the mattress that smelled vaguely of dust, mold, and apple, tears streaming freely across her face. Not that she wasn't grateful that Jim and his family were receiving her there, it was just... missing. Missing for Kali, miss her mother, miss her grandmother and even miss the noise of cars passing and honking outside the barred window.

She would not suit that house, that little town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm ... Yes, it's strange, but in this story El grew up in Buenos Aires - Argentina. I do not know, it was an idea that came to mind and I was like: I have to do it! So I did.
> 
> Spoiler: In the next chapter we will see that in any universe, it is impossible that Mike does not fall in love with Eleven.
> 
> I'm sorry for the grammatical and semantic errors you encounter while reading. I know they're boring and I'm trying to improve. I am still learning English and translating what I write in my language into the English language is kind of a way to improve this learning.
> 
> I'm sorry if this bothers you or makes you feel offended. Your help and patience are always welcome.  
> Kisses XOXOXOX


	3. Each error has a proportionately adequate consequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no universe in which Michael Wheeler does not fall in love with El.  
> Sarah shows that resentment with the new sister is deeper and more dangerous than anyone would have thought.

Will's new sister is a quiet girl.

Though she had agreed to be friends with them on the first day they met, she lived by the corners of the house, keeping away from everything and everyone, her head always low and a melancholy smile on her lips whenever someone approached her. In school, it wasn't much different. She lived alone in the hallways, had lunch alone, and at the end of the class, went home alone.

Some people, some students used to say that she did it because she felt better than them because she had lived in a large, well-known city. But Mike could see beyond that and knew that everyone was wrong. He wanted to believe that. He saw in El Hopper a sadness that none of the other children of their age had in their features. It seemed that she lived in an eternal cycle of post-punishment unhappiness (almost as if someone looked at her every day and determined that she should be left without her cell phone or her favorite toy).

He tilted his head to the side, watching her play with lunch. She was at a middle table - far from them enough not to interact with anyone and close enough that Mike could look over Dustin's head.

"She's weird," Lucas decides not for the first time, and Will grimaces in disgust. "Very weird... Do you agree with me, right, Will?"

"No, I mean, yeah... No, I do not agree." Will gets in the way of stabbing the mashed potatoes. "We're weird too, remember? El is just... Quiet, I guess. Mom loves her if you want to know."

Everyone settle for the latest information. It wasn't news that Will's mother wanted to have had a daughter and that her attempts to get close to Sarah had been thwarted by her temperament, so consequently, there was no surprise in her attachment to El.

"She spends a lot of time in the attic, and when she's not there... Well, she has the gift of disappearing like a ghost. It's almost enviable." Will continues with the reports, never stopping to stir in the mashed potatoes. "I'm not sure about that, I just know she's not that demon you say."

"Yeah? Whatever!" Lucas dismisses Will's comment with disdain, dark eyes fixed on the subject of the comments. "Dustin agrees with me, don't you?"

"Nope." Dustin shakes his head vehemently, curls flying from side to side. "She's nice. She's helped me in Spanish, you know?"

Lucas shakes his head, his face deformed in a grimace of distaste. He seems disappointed that no one shares his opinion of El Hopper.

Uninterested, Mike watches Hopper's new daughter again. Her brows are wrinkled, cheeks flushed as she chews thoughtfully at a little carrot squeeze from the canteen. She seems too concentrated to show her usual sadness and that makes her a little (much more than she already is) cute. The cutest girl that existed in Hawkins, prettier than Holly with her blond braids and Nancy with her blue eyes.

He jumped, almost falling over his lunch when someone slapped him on his head to summon him back. By the intensity of the act and by the act itself, there was no doubt about who had done it. Will wasn't adept at violence, Dustin much less, so it remained...

"Why did you do this, Lucas?" He scratched the aching area.

"Why are you staring at the weirdo?!" Lucas growls at him, looking like a dog protecting his bone.

Mike looks away immediately.

"Oh shit!" Will laughs softly and Dustin accompanies him.

"What, what did I miss?" Lucas alternates the look between his friends, always taking longer in Mike. "Did something happen and I didn't get it?"

"It just so happened that Mike here has a crush on Will's new foster sister."

The four boys are silent for a moment, the sounds of the cafeteria echoing around them, and then they burst into laughter. Everyone laughs, except Mike. He can't see anything funny about it.

"Does Mike like the weird one? Oh, man, how I didn't see it before?" Lucas chuckles loud enough to be heard by some of those present in the cafeteria. "Wait, wait, I can already see. They dating, getting married and having lots of mini Mikes and mini weird.”

"Have you kissed at least?"

"Of course not, Mike has not kissed anyone yet."

"Mike's mouth is as virgin as other parts of his body."

"Dude, the despair is so great? Hold on!"

"A womanizer can't hold back, people, accept that."

The laughter grew louder and Mike's blush darker. He was only twelve years old so, of course, he didn't think of marriage or anything related - finding cute a girl didn't mean he would marry and have children with her one day. What a strange thought or supposition (even because El had not even looked at him twice).

"Idiots!" Grunted, turning his attention to El's desk and getting shocked to realize she wasn't there. She was gone. "You morons."

"You're the idiot/moron here, Mike." Lucas laughs. "Only an idiot would want to have his first kiss with the weirdo."

"Lucas..."

"I do not think she came from Chicago, but from a psychiatric hospital like Michael Myers, what do you think?"

Dustin and Will stop laughing and stare at their friend as they notice the seriousness of his words. It was no joke. Once a while Lucas did that, pushing the limits of everything and accidentally wounding one of his friends, resulting in some great advice in which he needed to shake hands and apologize to the offended man in question. This advice wasn't always about Lucas, no, they all made mistakes, but most of the time it was with him.

"What is it, guys?" Lucas asks when the silence of everyone grows louder.

"You idiot!"

Mike begins to gather all the books he has spread on the table and throws it into his backpack.

"That girl lost everything, so sorry, Lucas, sorry if I'm just trying to be cool. I do not think I'm being stupid." He stood up from the table. “You have a sister, Lucas, like me, would you like someone to treat her like that? Calling Erica by weirdo? "

"I wouldn't mind too much, to tell you the truth."

Mike stared at him in disbelief.

"Man, just... Never mind, forget it." He threw the backpack on his back. "Just to remember one thing: we're the weirdos at this school, we pick up and are cursed, so I do not think we have the right to be joking with anyone.

Ignoring his friends' exclamations and Lucas's astonished face, Mike leaves the cafeteria. El is no longer in his thoughts, at least not for the hour, the anger of the discussion clouding any kind of thinking.

For a moment he considered the possibility of running away and going home, avoiding Lucas's apologies that it was coming at some point, but that idea was completely dismissed at once because Holly would surely have it on their mother as soon as he got his feet inside the home. The second option, the most viable at that time and also the one is chosen, is the AV club; it's a predictable place, but it's his only choice.

Only because they are the only students attending the AV club organized by Professor Clark, Mike assumes the place will be empty and that he will have at least a few minutes of quiet time to think. Well, maybe that's a wrong presumption. The first thing that Mike misses on reaching the AV room is that the door is ajar and his thoughts immediately run to Troy since he had already vandalized the room a few months ago. Mike's mind starts to run fast, reasoning about what he should do - calling Mr. Clark would take too long, call the guys too, then...

With his chest steeled and all the courage he can muster, Mike enters the room ready for a verbal onslaught (because physically that could never happen).

"If anything is broken, Troy, I swear to Yoda that I'll..."

Mike was hoping to find the good old bully who has been haunting him since kindergarten, but surprisingly, he comes face to face with a small girl with eyes so wide that she looks like a deer about to be run over by a drunk driver.

She, who was standing by the old telephone they held for evaluation purposes, backed up to bump into the wall.

"What are you doing here? The room was closed, only the members of the club have the keys."

"It was open." She claims without any kind of conviction in her voice. A lie.

He frowned, mental cogs spinning above the empathic gears.

"No, it wasn't. We never left the door of this room open for safety reasons, ‘cause the materials here... Oh!" He looked at her, more specifically at the small aluminum object that shines between her fingers. "Did you break into the room with your hairpin?"

"No..."

"This is so cool!" Mike ignores her refusal and lets the glare take over. "The coolest thing that's ever happened in Hawkins since Tisha Briggs got trapped inside the water box ‘cause she tried to hide from the werewolf! It's like in the movies, those old movies where the girl just takes the hairpin and opens the door... "

All Mike's excitement vanishes as he sees how gigantic the girl's eyes are. She looks... desperate.

"Eleanor..."

"El" She corrects him and Mike almost smiles at it, the nickname he created. "Please do not tell Hopper."

Despite the excitement and having claimed that El had opened the door of the room with a hairpin, Mike almost goes crazy with her statement. Was that true? I mean, this thing of opening doors with hairpin and credit cards was the stuff of the '70s and' 80s movies, wasn't it? The main question was: where had she learned this? Certainly not with her mother or her stepfather.

El Hopper was an interesting girl.

He closed the door behind him, for if, before he wanted some teacher to come and witness everything, now all he wanted most was privacy to understand what was going on there.

"Why can't he know?"

"Because is he a cop. That's technically against the law." She wanders, even though her big brown eyes deliver another motive.

"Okay..." Mike looked at the phone she was trying to use, curious. "What did you want with that? It's a nuisance for most people."

"I wanted to make a call."

She looks down at the device they were talking about, looking forward to.

"What about your cell phone?" He fumbled in his pocket to take out the cell phone his mother had given him as a birthday present and wave him in the air.

If possible, El's eyes become four times larger when Mike shows his cell phone. Was that desire glittering so vividly?

"I do not... I do not have a cell phone yet." The shy response comes to leave him with his jaw dropped.

Who in the XXI century doesn't have a cell phone? The device was like a new extension of people's body, people getting bewildered when they stayed for more than five minutes without typing, posting a photo on social networks or playing one of those damn games whose goal was to make the player lose his temper. How had Hopper not given her a cell phone? It was an essential tool for maintaining communication with the children or, as his mother used to talk to her friends when she was with her children, to keep the children on a short rein - calling and sending check messages every two hours to find out if everything was okay.

Still, in shock at the answer, Mike puts his cell phone on the desk and pushes it until it is close enough to her. She could use his cell phone without problems, certainly had better communication at a distance, and was easier to use than the big, clumsy 60's dialer, a rarity they had managed to persuade Dustin's grandfather to donate to the AV club.

"Do not have a password." He informed her with a dull smile. "My mother says a twelve-year-old boy has nothing to hide with a password."

"And you have something to hide?" She asks with a friendly smile.

"Only my comic books with violent scenes." He remarked thoughtfully, contemplating changing the hiding place. "She hates the Marvel and DC bloodshed. If she gets that comic book in which Superman rips out the Joker's heart... I'm sure I'll be forced to burn everything and never read anything different than school books."

With attentive eyes, he watched as El entered the numbers she wanted and then carried the cell phone to her ear in anticipation. She was trying to contain it, but she was completely agitated.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She replies, her eyes lighting up as she hears something on the other side of the line. "Hi... Hey, it's me, Kalls, I wanted to talk to you so much... Kall?”

The silence that hangs in the room is heavy, almost heavy enough to be cut with a knife. El stands there staring at his cell phone, stunned until the screen fades from its electronic to lifeless black automatic. Apparently, the person El wanted to talk to didn't feel the same need as she did.

Mike tries to pretend that he doesn't see the tears that glow in her eyes or the way her sadness seems to have been multiplied, but luckily or not, El decides to make things easier. With a fake smile, she turns to him and returns his cell phone while trying to get rid of the tears while they are still in their source.

An example of strength, he has to say. Instead of her many people, he wouldn't be able to hold back the tears or sketch a smile, however yellow he might be. Sometimes the urge to cry was stronger than the desire to keep the dignity, but El was able to be an exception to that - something impressive and also, in the future, worrisome. Not always pretending that everything is fine ended up giving the person a happy ending)

"Thanks for the cell phone, Wheeler, but... It didn't happen."

"I'm sorry," Mike spoke truthfully, receiving the cell phone and holding it in the palm of her hand. "I'm really sorry."

When the answer to his sympathetic lament is nothing more than El stooping behind the AV technology desk to tinker with his backpack, Mike decides to see it as a momentary pause in their conversation, and just as many young people when they find themselves in an uncomfortable silence, pick up the cell phone to distract himself. Not surprisingly, he finds a barrage of unread messages sent by Dustin, Lucas, and Will.

It's always like this, is not it? He thought as he glanced over the messages. They were fighting, there was a flood of messages, and then, when they met, they would have apologized. Always like that, regardless of who was upset.

Ranger: Dude, where are you?

Cleric: We're sorry for the whole pitch.

Bard: Lucas must feel more than both of us since it's all his fault.

Ranger: 😤 no, it is not! It is not my fault.

Bard: Course is!

Bard: You started it all.

Cleric: I thought we wanted to apologize.

Ranger: I didn't start anything! Stop being a jerk!

Bard: The only jerk here is you!

He turned his eyes to the continuity of messages that, in a turn, had shifted from mourning to a new discussion full of emoji and accusations. Mike honestly was no longer angry at any of the three, he couldn't stay angry for long, but he wasn't too keen to participate in that fight, so it was best to ignore everything and let them work themselves out.

Placing his cell phone in the muffler permanently, he leaned over the technology desk to see what was holding her there - Was she avoiding him or was she busy with something? The answer comes when he finds her sitting on the floor, quietly eating her lunch as if nothing is happening (and, for her, maybe she wasn't).

"Hey." He waved his hand to attract her attention, scolding himself immediately as there was no need to catch the attention of someone who was already staring at him. "I was thinking..."

"Why did you defend me against your friends?"

He blinked. How could she know about it? She sat away from their table, couldn't hear anything - or could she?

"I heard it coming out of the cafeteria." El clarified the questions that were probably in his face. "You didn't have to do that."

"I did it because I wanted to." He swallowed his chest. "Because I thought it was right. Lucas is going too far with all this chase."

"He doesn't have to like me, Mike.”

"He also doesn't need to pick on you." He squinted, unwilling to back off. "Listen, I know he may be looking boring now, but Lucas is a great guy, he just..."

"Do not like strangers? Does he have a crush on Sarah and attack anyone who irritates her? Does he think I'm going to separate you?" She suggests with a discreet smile. "I've imagined a few things."

The Sheriff's younger daughter smiles brightly at him, making it clear that, despite everything she has just said, she is nowhere near upset - no more, at least. She was right about Lucas, right on every one of her assumptions. He hated strangers, the prospect of someone who could separate the group, and also had an externally intense crush on Sarah Hopper (though she never once looked at him).

It was foolish to wonder how observant she was, but even so, Mike couldn't help but be astonished and, as a result, smile like a fool. Maybe his friends were right, maybe he had a crush on El Hopper and that wasn't such a bad thing as they'd been making it sound like.

"You're a great detective." She joked, moving closer to watch her keep the rest of her lunch in a bag. "You're the apprentice to the great Sherlock Holmes, is that it?"

"Ah, that one I know!" The girl rejoices, big brown eyes shining when she finishes what she is doing and gets up from the floor. "I love to read about him. My sister... My nanny and I read every night while my mother and her husband went out for a walk. I love that... The Read-headed League! What do you think?"

The joy of the girl with short brown curls ends when she realizes how quiet he is.

"You never read a line written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, did you?"

"Just his name?" He scratched the back of his neck, ashamed. "I just read stuff for school and my comics, just that."

He knows that this lack of affinity with literature makes him look pathetic and sloppy, but if El agrees to that, she hides well. She simply shrugs and starts to roll her backpack.

"Here." She hands him a hard red book. "I lend you with all pleasure."  
"And what is this?" He flipped through the book, glimpsing some illustrations.

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fabulous work."

There's a sequence of noises behind Mike, but he's too busy looking at the illustrations in the book to pay attention to this or El's extreme approach.

"And this is me thanking you for being kind to me."

The last part is whispered so low that he has to raise his head to see if he heard right. And it's there, exactly in that fraction of seconds, that it happens. He has to admit, it doesn't happen as he believed would happen, but it happens - it's far from an illusion since nothing the universe can do or speak will change the fact that El Hopper is kissing him.

She's grabbing his face, pressing her lips against his, and, goddammit, that's his first kiss and it's with El Hopper! Mike is about to start hyperventilating when El lets him go.

"I also heard that part about you never having kissed anyone," El whispered still in a low tone to him. "I scared you?"

"Not." He replied in astonishment. "It was cool."

"Great! See ya, Mike."

With her pink backpack and violin case, she walks up and down, El walks past him and Mike follows her gaze. What makes him stop drooling in the Sheriff's new daughter is the sight of Will, Lucas, and Dustin huddled in the door, as shocked as he is. El doesn't change her behavior even as she passes the small group of gawping nerds, acting as if nothing has happened.

And maybe nothing had happened. Maybe Mike was hallucinating about giving his first kiss and having fantasized about it, with his eyes open, he might have fantasized about kissing the only girl who didn't look at him like he was a decomposing dead fish.

"SHIT!" Dustin exclaims when El leaves. “You had your first kiss!”

"We saw your first kiss!" Lucas also exclaims and his tone is considerably milder, less offensive and more than reverential. "Like, her mouth in your mouth."

"Your first kiss was with my foster sister!" Will enters the wave of obvious statements and now Mike is beginning to realize why El made his deductions so easily. "

“Dude, you were the first of us to kiss someone."

"Kissing a GIRL! A GIRL OF TRUTH! Of course, could be a guy, but it was with a girl! CRAZY!"

"It seems like you never kissed anyone." He scoffed at the book El had given him. "You already kissed, didn't you?"

Mike Wheeler's three best friends look guilty and that's the negative he needs to know.

"You never kissed anyone! Oh, man!" Mke packed the backpack. "You lied! Why the hell did you do this?"

"Because it was cool to see your face red with embarrassment or anger," Dustin replies innocently. "Why do friends tease each other?"

"Can we focus here on the fact that you were the first of us to kiss someone?"

"My foster sister, to top it all off."

"Are you dating?"

“She just lent me her book, guys." Mike tries to calm the excitement. "So, I do not think so."

"But she kissed you!!"

"We're not dating! Come on, let's go to class."

Lucas could be the bravest of them, Dustin the funniest and Will most timidly empathic, but Mike was the more realistic, and by having that "magnificent gift," he knew there was no reason to be deceived about dating El Hopper - it was as she had said: the kiss was just a thanks. A strange kind of thanks, but still one. The most that could happen was the two becoming friends, which wasn't a bad thing from afar. So she didn't have a crush on him just like he had for her? El was a wonderful girl and Mike would be content to be just her friend.

(Or at least he would try to keep that thought in mind too fiercely, fearing to ruin the friendship between them.)

Mike only sees El again a week after the kiss in the municipal pool during the annual fundraiser for the town's orphanage - the only day the city ladies stopped gossiping about the lives of those who thought they were below them (including his mother) to do something really good.

Mothers would sell their home-cooked foods - and compete to see who had the best recipe - parents helped out on baked goods and sales, local merchants sold their wares, teenagers helped out in a few things and then fled to enjoy the water or grab and the children... Well, they just ran around, helping fundraisers by spending their parents' money. In this mess was El Hopper, with her eyes closed, enjoying the summer breeze sitting by the pool.

She looked satisfied with her short curls, slightly raised face, and loose clothing. Beautiful. He shook his head, pushing away the thought. That wasn't what he was going to talk to her about, was he? Not! He was going to comment on the book she had borrowed, the book he had devoured with surprising greed - voracity that had no bearing on the fact that the book was a hint of hers.

"Going to talk to your sweetheart, Mike?" Lucas intercepts him, wrapping his arms around him, while Will and Dustin also appear, smiling.

He disengaged himself from Lucas's arms and looked at the other friends accusingly.

"She's not my girlfriend, and yes, I'm going to talk to her about the book she lent me."

"Then you will not mind if we accompany you, will you?" Dustin teases.

"I need to talk to El," Will adds with humor. "Mother sent me..."

"Your mother didn't send you to do anything!" He retorted with irritation. Why was he angry? It was good that the guys were going with him, so maybe they'd realize just how cool El was. "You're just doing this to be an idiot.”

With the subtlety, only running could run in the veins of a twelve-year-old, the four boys run close to El. Lucas, Mike watches closely, remains at a good distance even though he has accompanied them here - a way to make it clear he's thinking of giving the new girl a chance, but he was still not quite sure what he was doing.

"What are you doing here alone?" Dustin asks before Mike can comment on the book. "This pool is for adults."

"We can't get into it until we have enough height," Will adds with gravity, his tone is caused by the depth of the pool.

"Or if you can't swim and you do not have a wave."

El pauses a little, her white T-shirt too big for her size to sink into her body like some kind of sack-why was she wearing such a suit when all the kids were in their bathing suit?

"I can't swim." She confesses to them and Mike is almost certain to have heard some resentment in her voice. "He said swimming was too dangerous."

The four share a look of curiosity, aware that the same question pervaded each one's mind.

"Who, El?" Will require and automatically all lean forward in anticipation of her response.

"Swimming can save your life," Luke states not to contribute to the El question, but to demonstrate his level of knowledge.

"What if there was a flood?" Dustin is horrified, hands flying to his face. "Would you die?!"

"There can't be a flood in Hawkins!" He punched Dustin in the chest. "We do not have an aquifer big enough for that."

"Aquifer?"

He should have been less immersed in conversation with his friends and more aware of what was going on around him, for if he had done so, he might have seen the sneaky approach of Sarah and her gang or perhaps have seen the horror expression of El upon realizing the mistake he had made in talking about someone from her past in Chicago.

In a blink of an eye, they are there, around them like a bunch of blood-sniffing sharks. Sarah, above all, looked like a shark - a pearly smile gleaming dangerously in the direction of the half-sister of whom she so disliked.

"Argh, Eleanor, what horrible clothes is this?!" She moans in disgust, pulling on her half-sister's clothes with her fingertips. "You look like a rag!"

El lowers her head and Mike doesn't know about his friends, but he feels really bad about the way Sarah is treating her.

"Are not you going to say anything, El?" Sarah hummed silently, badly messing with El's hair.

"Leave her alone, Sarah!" Will defends El and, Mike may be wrong, but it seems to be the first time he has done this since the girl arrived in town. "I'll tell your father."

"As if he would believe you!" The teenager mocks to then begin what will be known in the future as "Wet Incident" (a name that will come from Dustin's mind).

What happens next may just be a terrible coincidence of fate, it may be the work of a teenage and inconsequential mind that wants to make a catch or just wants to test the truth of a girl almost rickety of twelve, but whatever the reason, results in a scene that will be engraved in the minds of the citizens of Hawkins and that would be mentioned by them until a new event shake the structures of the small city.

(Spoiler: the next shocking and shocking event will also star El Hopper)

It's all too much for the mind of a twelve-year-old boy to reason and understands, so Mike can only see things in the simplest way possible through a defense mechanism that seeks to stop him from being a traumatized adult in the future. Sarah rests her foot on her sister's back, puts her hand on her leg, and that's it!

BUM!

El Hopper is in the water struggling desperately.

El Hopper is drowning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahn ... I'm sorry to say (or maybe not even that much), but from now on Mike is going to gain a rough look and even make a lot of mistakes and hurt a lot of people. Please, do not hate that teddy bear. Think about how much he has already suffered.
> 
> I'm sorry for the grammatical and semantic errors you encounter while reading. I know they're boring and I'm trying to improve. I am still learning English and translating what I write in my language into the English language is kind of a way to improve this learning.
> 
> I'm sorry if this bothers you or makes you feel offended. Your help and patience are always welcome.
> 
> Thanks for reading ❤❤❤


	4. The first escape attempt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> El runs away from home (the first of which will be three escapes in total).

She might have been feeling so many things as she sank into the clear water - fear, dread, worry, the helplessness that she would probably die from too much water - but at that moment essentially all she could feel was the rage.

It was a rage of months, two and a half months, more specifically.

Rage at what had happened to her mother, rage at what compelled her to be in Hawkins, at not being in Chicago with Kali, rage at Kali for throwing her there and then ignoring all attempts at communication, she was rage at Hopper for avoiding her as if she had some kind of contagious disease, she was rage at the arrogant school fools who thought themselves superior to her just because her bourgeois dads and moms were there to give them money, anger (mostly) at her half-sister's bitch who loved to make it hard for everything in her grasp... Rage at everything.

(Maybe not at everything since Joyce, her sons Will and Jonathan Byers, and Michael Wheeler could be the only good exceptions in her life at that time. Three good exceptions against a world of misfortune.)

Just too angry for a twelve-year-old girl.

El was still struggling with her conscience, wondering if it was still worth trying to learn to swim just at that moment of desperation when someone pulled her out of the bubble world and devoid of oxygen. From the silence, she goes back to the buzz of agitated people. As much as she tried to play the tough one, she was still a confused, freshly saved twelve-year-old from drowning, so when someone pulls her worriedly toward her, her automatic reaction is to cling to that person.

" _Mama_ ," she muttered, the fear of returning to the chlorine-filled water making her irrational for a few seconds. "Mama... Mama..."

"It's Joyce, honey."

"And Jonathan."

And that's just the splash of cold water that the person who just got out of the pool didn't need. But it still turns out to be good - good that it had ended her illusion, good that it had ended the idiocy that invaded her (how stupid to call her mother, especially when she knew Terry's fate very well).

Sniffing tears she didn't even know she was shedding, El pulls back to look at the two people holding her so tightly. Joyce cradled her against her body as if she were a frightened baby, and Jonathan, dripping water from head to toe, acted as a protective shield around them. There was no need for a high degree of reasoning to know that it wasn't her father who had jumped into the pool to save her.

(A little voice whispers into her mind that he would never do that, that would probably let her sink into the deepest of the oceans, and though she doesn't believe it, it gets trapped inside her heart, guarding along with existing hurts and also waiting. the ones on the way)

Joyce brushes the wet hair away from El 's eyes, delicate fingers lingering carefully against her complexion.

"What's up, my beautiful?" The older woman begins to try to warm her as her hands rise and fall against the girl's arms in a repetitive motion.

El 's attention couldn't focus on Joyce even if she wanted to. Even knowing that the answer would disappoint her, even knowing it would hurt her deeply, she stepped away from her stepmother's maternal arms to scan the room with wide eyes. What she finds is at least... obvious.

Sarah is hugged Hopper, clinging to him as if she had been dropped into the pool and nearly drowned. The boys who once were around her are now around the two of them, but unlike the two onlookers, they don't seem compassionate. They, even the boy Lucas, the one who hated her, seem angry, shouting wildly and pointing accusingly at Sarah. Were they defending her?

"SARAH PUSHED EL!"

"WE SAW EVERYTHING!"

"Oh dear God, we were almost a witness to a crime! Shit, shit, shit, shit!"

"SHE DID THAT! WE SAW EVERYTHING! AND MIKE’S SISTER SAW TOO"

"TELL HIM, NANCY!"

"Boys, I don't..."

"IT’S ENOUGH!" Hopper's voice stands out from the others, silencing them quickly. "I'm sure what happened here was an unfortunate accident, nothing that deserves all this turmoil. Accidents happen ..."

El feels a strange emptiness inside her stomach. No pain, just a deepening emptiness as Hopper approaches them with Sarah.

"How are things around here?" He asks without releasing Sarah or giving any indication that he would lean in to see how El was doing.

"Great!" Jonathan barks surprisingly aggressively. "Things have never been better! Don't you see?"

"We're taking care of her, Jim," Joyce responds right after her son. "But I think we'll need to have a little talk when we get home."

El turns to Joyce and Jonathan, whose brown eyes ignore Hopper's arrival and stand beneath her.

"I want to get out of here."

Joyce runs a hand through her short, understanding hair.

"So it's going to be the way you want it. I think we've had too many emotions for today, right, honey?"

"It would be better to take Sarah home too." Hopper begins to speak with the overprotective tone he used to use when talking about Sarah. "It shook her enough."

"It shook her? I think what shook her was the fault." Jonathan mumbles putting his hands under El 's armpits and lifting her into his lap. "I'll take El home in my car. Just her. If you want to take Sarah, take her in your car."

"Jonathan!"

With El 's body hooked around his waist and her head resting heavily on his shoulder, Jonathan promptly ignores the words of his mother and stepfather and pushes his way pushing the crowd of onlookers away. From her seat, El could only watch the people staring at her, Hopper looking... Out of action and the boys who earlier surrounded her with an air of desolation.

Feeling as if her tongue was swollen the same as it was when she had a serious allergic reaction to strawberries, kiwifruit, and pickles, she lay in the backseat of the car and stared apathetically at the driver's seat where Jonathan sat.

Why was he doing this for her? Other than sitting together on the steps of the stairs, each reading their book or doing their homework, they were nowhere near. Jonathan had a silent nature, and El herself was also adapting to that natural strain, which prevented them from approaching them.

It wasn't like she didn't like him. She liked him, his mother, and even the often noisy Will Byers. They were a nice family. Sarah and Hopper weren't.

"I know Sarah was a bitch with you today, she's been a bitch ever since you arrived," Jonathan starts talking wildly, hands on the wheel. "She thinks she's entitled to do these things just because she had cancer when she was twelve. Big deal. Everyone goes through trouble in life. She had cancer so what? My dad beat me when I was twelve and here I am."

El tilts her head a little to the side, interested in what Jonathan was roaring, but still too apathetic to speak.

"No one has to put up with Sarah's nincompoops just because the beautiful princess has survived cancer. Thousands of people survive and don't become idiots like her. I think something went wrong with her treatment."

Right or wrong, El couldn't feel any sympathy for Sarah when she learned that she had once been one of those fragile-looking angel children who could be knocked over by the slightest breeze and cancer. That certainly wasn't her anymore. Now she was a blonde, strong, light-styled teenager and a wonderful apprentice devil.

All she can think is all Sarah has done to her in recent months. The ants on her bed, the times she had knocked El down when she had her leg tripped over her, the bad jokes that El 's clothes were secondhand and had previously belonged to her, the times she woken in the middle of the night to the tunes of Sarah's cell phone purposefully placed by her ear, the comments about her short hair, what had happened to her mother, and of course El 's being a child born out of Hopper's happy old marriage and never been taken over by him.

When, at home, she grabbed the same suitcase she had brought from Chicago, full of clothes since she hadn't even got a box to store them, and her mother's violin case, she had no doubt what she needed. do at that time.

Runaway from Hawkins.

The most likely escape option was to Chicago, of course, it was, but before she went she needed to call Kali to let her know she was going home. Say goodbye to Hopper, leave a letter telling her what she was doing and why she was doing it? No. She just needed to talk to Kali, her real sister.

Sneaking downstairs with the junk she was carrying and not attracting Jonathan's attention to what she was going to do would be simply impossible, then the best and most fun option at that moment would be to break into Sarah's room and use her phone. That bitch had a very expensive cell phone, and a room phone in the room - El knew that because, after seeing Sarah's cell phone charging in some socket of the house, she had overheard another talking on the phone from her place in the attic.

It's the least, she thought as she entered enemy territory. The least after what she did to me today. Pink and blonde bitch.

El had never entered Sarah's room - "Forbidden Territory, brat!" - but there was no big deal there either. It was just... The stupid world of Sarah Bitch Hopper. It was pink four-walled crap, with fuchsia carpet, purple curtains, gigantic bed, and closet. It also had a photo mural of Sarah, Hopper, and a blonde woman who she supposed was the mother of her half-sister. Most important of all was the pink telephone below the mural, practically clamoring for use.

"Come on, Kalls." She whimpered into the phone after dialing the numbers so familiar to her. "Just this once, listen to me ..."

She was still dripping a few drops of chlorine-filled water, and despite her hastily changed clothes as she gathered her few belongings, she felt very cold, so it seemed like forever until a voice appeared on the other end of the line.

_"Kali Prasad on the line, who's this?"_

"It's me, Kall, Jane. I just..."

El isn't there to see but knows that Kali is about to hang up the phone.

"I'm leaving."

_"What the fuck did you say, Jane?"_

Swallowed hard. At least I managed to get her attention.

"I'm leaving." El reiterated her voice low. "I need to go home."

_"You're home already, idiot! In this house, you have security, which is all you have to worry about."_

"Security of what? I almost drowned, Kali..."

_"Accidents happen, El Jane Ives Hopper! Stop whining for stupid things and grow up. You know there are worse things to be sorry for."_ Kali barks at her hard. _"You can't come to Chicago. Your home is in Hawkins now."_

"I want to get out of this hell, Kali. I want to live with you..."

_"OH MY GOD! DIDN'T YOU UNDERSTAND, GIRL? HIT THE PHONE ON YOUR FACE LAST TIME AND LEAVE YOU ON HAWKINS WASN’T CLEAR ENOUGH?!"_ Kali lowers her voice from shrill screams to the hiss of a snake that has recently taken human form. _"I don't want you anymore. I don't want you in my life. Why would I want a child in my life? A child desperate for attention, sticky and not even my family's. The family has to be with the family. I'm not your family."_

She cried silently, constant tears wetting her cheeks as aching sobs struggled to escape from her throat and surface.

_"Wipe away those tears that I know are shedding and swallow the crying. Crying doesn't solve your problems. Reacting, being mature makes you suffer less. Don't call me anymore. Never again,_ **_understand me?_ ** _"_

"You're the boss, Kali Prasad."

She slammed the phone down, far from caring whether it would break this crap or attract Jonathan's attention, who, kindly and completely unaware of her plans, was downstairs preparing something hot for her to eat and warm.

If Kali wanted to hurt her deeply to the point that it would become a likely recurring nightmare in her life, to the point of making her feel more alone than ever... Well, she had succeeded. Now El surely knew that she could no longer count on whom she had always considered a sister, who had no place or person to turn to. However, if Kali's intention, in addition to causing new wounds, was to dissuade her from the purpose of running away from Hawkins and away from the Hoppers... At this small point, she had failed gracefully.

Hawkins's escape wasn't canceled. This escape had taken too long to happen. But now it would happen and no one, Kali, Hopper or anyone would stop her.

There were two pertinent questions: how would she get out of that house and, especially, where would she go. The wet-haired girl is still pondering the two priority issues of the moment when she hears what in recent days had become the warning that she would be ignored as if it were an insect. Hopper had come home and along with him was the devil of her older sister and the lovely Joyce.

For some reason, she didn't understand since she hated more than 70 percent of the people she would meet, grabbed all her belongings and ran to peer out the window.

Joyce was standing by the car, face flushed with fury as she shot Hopper and Sarah.

"I already said it was an accident, Joyce. How many times will you keep insisting on it?" Sarah slams the car door hard (which makes her a little flashback than she did with the phone).

"And you want to convince me that the same girl who kept quiet all party long, sitting on the water's edge, suddenly jumped out and tried to drown? Tell me another one!"

"I won't be here listening to this bullshit!" Sarah is victimized as if she had fallen into the pool. "I'll call my mom and tell her everything!"

Sarah, wearing a light beach dress, leaves the scene and leaves Hopper and Joyce alone.

"What?" Hopper raises his hands as Joyce turns her glare on him.

"You need to pay more attention to your daughters' needs, Jim! Which one deserves a sermon and which one needs affection." The woman points to the house. "Wake up to life before it's too late."

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING IN MY ROOM?!"

After all that has happened, El isn't frightened by the aggressiveness that Sarah has in her voice when she catches her in her room. Her thoughts are over a thousand, drawing a plan of escape.

"Are you deaf?"

Sarah's room had the easiest access downstairs as it was practically placed on the porch roof. The only problem here was the height of the fall that, not badly, could hurt badly.

Okay, that was crazy, so crazy, but she could do that. She could and would do. Clutching the single shoulder strap of her suitcase with her violin case tight against her, she propped one foot on the window frame and, after placing the other, hoisted herself up. Nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing.

"What do you think you're doing, girl?"

"Nothing that matters to you."

"You’re crazy!"

"And you’re a bitch. But, hey, that’s no news."

"I HATE YOU, BRAT!"

"Oh, but we have to agree on that. I hate you too, you stupid blond bitch!"

El went down to the roof, giving thanks to God when she didn't give in or hint that she would. Calmly, she crept along the foot of the wall until she reached the top of the roof, also the exact spot where there was a support column that would be very helpful in helping her down.

"DAD!" Sarah's voice screams in the background as El tosses the bag and then plays the violin on top of it. "DAD, ELEANOR IS... RUNNING!"

She rolled her eyes at Sarah's obvious statement, tentatively stepping for the support column. Why did it have to be so hard? It wasn't that hard to climb the walls of her old house.

"Eleanor!" Hopper appears at Sarah's window, leaning out trying to reach her. "You'll get hurt, kid."

"She's crazy, daddy! Crazy!"

"What do you think you're doing, kid? You'll get hurt."

Hopper was right about something in his newly adopted worried father monologue: she wounded herself. El has always been good at climbing things, but still plagued by drowning and now by Hopper's shouts (why was he doing this?), She ends up distracting herself, her foot slipping and falling to the ground when it was still five and a half meters to the ground floor. She falls awkwardly, over her arm and far away from anything that could dampen the fall.

The cries of her loving, worried father were still ringing overhead, her arm ached like hell, but she picked up her suitcase and violin anyway, and ran into the forest that lay before her.

The pain in her arm turned out to be a major hindrance as she advanced through the woods to the highway. Any movement, even minimal, aroused a great surge of electricity, nausea and gigantic pain. It didn't take much to know what it meant it was broken, completely in shambles. But you wanna know?! That wouldn't stop her from running away from Hawkins.

Where was she going? Anyone could find her in the egg that was Hawkins, and going to Chicago was no longer a viable option. Kali didn't want her there, she hated her, and now, after hearing everything she'd heard, El didn't want to go there either. Her pride was too great to go after Kali and beg for her love and her lair. Begging for someone's love, whoever it was, wouldn't be something El would do at any time in her life. She would never beg for anyone: not for Kali, not for any boyfriend or Dad's love.

Hawkins? Nevermore. Chicago? Not in a dream. The only place she could think of was her grandmother's old house, which was being taken care of by some of her good friends. The problem with this choice of refuge was that her grandmother's house was on the other side of the world, too far to walk. To get there would have to take a plane, to take a plane would need money and money she didn't have. Sure, there were quick ways to raise money, but she sure wouldn't be sticking to them.

At the moment the plan was to wander around until she was somewhere safe and far enough from Hopper and, man, if she had to sleep on the street and eat leftovers... Well, that would be done. What she no longer wanted was to remain under the same roof as Sarah and Hopper, the devil and the hypocrite.

El has already left the forest and reached the road some time ago when she realizes that something is wrong. No, it isn't her arm that is becoming excessively numb and purplish. No, it's not the dizziness that comes over her with every step. No, no, it's not the hunger that wraps her stomach. What bothers her about the whole situation is the burgundy BMW that overtook she and then retreated to follow her from afar. It could be a kidnapper, it could be one of those men who went after younger girls to molest them, to abuse them… Oh God, please don't be that. Please don't be a crazy thirsty for younger girls.

An escape plan is being worked out in El 's mind - could she run with that broken arm? Would it be necessary to abandon the suitcase and the violin? The violin... She couldn't leave it... - when the car approaches her again. El turns her face to the forest, trying to pretend she wasn't noticing or realizing what was going on.

"Hey!" The man in the car calls her. "Aren't you Sarah's little sister?!"

Disgust at Sarah's name is what makes El look at the man inside the car. The man, who was a teenager, looked familiar in her eyes. Sunglasses, exaggerated tuft, popular "womanizer" look, and menswear.

This was the stupid boyfriend of Sarah's blond friend, Mike's sister. El had never bothered to find his name since, with his company with Sarah, he couldn't be a friendly person.

"What do you think you're doing? Hmm... What's your name again?"

"My name is get-out-of-my-face, stupid!" She snapped furiously.

"What a big-mouthed girl! I like you."

“Yeah? But I don’t like you, old man! Get out here! Leave alone.”

The car stops and El, in an attempt to hasten her pace, stumbles and falls right over her arm. She isn't aware of it, the pain makes her completely deaf, but she lets out a howl of anguish so loud and desperate that it scares the teenager to his death.

The stupid dark-eyed teenager comes to her in an instant, picking her up off the ground and holding her against him for a basic check. El hates his closeness, his audacity to touch her, but she has to admit that his touch is similar to that of a forensic coroner.

“Fuck!” The teenager exclaims, resting El 's arm back where it was. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Alright, no panic, little girl... Your arm is fine, it just... It’s just got a really big bruise... "

"I know it's broken."

"Oh! Alright then, you're tough and smart. Cool. Very cool." He lets out a shaky breath, verging on the panic attack. "You know we have to go to the hospital, don't you?"

The inevitability of going to the hospital sometime to take care of the broken arm would eventually reach her was a fact, but El didn't want that to happen in Hawkins, where Jim Hopper could locate her. She didn't want to go back to rejection.

Taking advantage of her distraction, the teenager whose name she couldn't remember picked up the phone and began dialing what was predictably the Hopper house number. Goddamn it, she thought indignantly that her escape plan had been destroyed by the damn broken arm.

"Hi, Sarah!" She rolled her eyes at the irony of it. She had run off because of Sarah and who was the big-headed guy calling for? To Sarah! That's right! "So, funny story, you know... Oh, what? Your step-sister ran away from home? Do you know what's funnier? No, it's not me shutting up. Want to know? I want to talk to your fat... "

"With Joyce!" El suggested quickly, disgusted with the possibility of talking to Hopper. Joyce was an angel.

"Yeah, little girl! What, Sarah?! Oh, yes! I'd like to talk to your stepmother. Yeah, your stepmother, sweetie. I don't need to give you explanations! Move on to her now! Want to know? Forget it! Just send your father and stepmother to the hospital. I have a package for them. Yeah, I found your sister. Half-sister. Whatever. Man, how can you be so boring?"

El probably needed some kind of treatment or something because, seriously, there was probably a good chance that something was wrong with her. Why did she have this problem with sympathizing with people years older than her? It wasn't as if a sixteen-year-old would want to be friends with a twelve-year-old girl - Dottie and the guys being the exception to this rule.

The big-haired teenager had climbed several steps the concept of El by insulting Sarah during the call. It had been so fantastic and yet not even a third of what she wanted to do and talk to the devil blonde - but still, it was still enough for now.

(Because at some point El would explode once and for all and at that moment there would be no attempt at escape: there would be her stepsister's bitch punched in the nose, then having the blond strands of her head pulled out in tufts and, Last but not least, getting a good enough arm brace to get over El 's once-broken arm, and all that wouldn't be enough to supply the anger and pain that would exist inside El and then there, just then she would try her second escape)

Being more careful than he seems to be, the teenager takes her into the car and sits her in the front seat - probably to keep an eye on her - and they only leave after he is careful to pick up all of his personal effects. El from the floor and store them in the back seat. Sweet.

The silence wasn't usually something that bothered El completely, having become a mate of hers, but is usually used to bother people and it was no surprise when it began to bother the big-haired teenager. People felt a basic need to fill the silence.

"How did you hurt that arm?"

"Falls when I was climbing the porch column." She explained simply, tracing the extension of the injured arm with one finger. "You don't like Sarah, do you...?”

The boy is slow to respond and to realize that the reticence at the end of her speech meant that she didn't know his name, shocked by the calmness she had said she had done.

"Steve Harrington. Yeah, your sister... stepsister," He corrected quickly at El 's grumpy look. "It's hard to deal with her, you know? You only see me around Sarah because my girlfriend walks with her a lot. Not that Nancy is like her. She isn't. They are best friends since kindergarten, so there's this bizarre connection. Sarah hates me, she barely let me date Nancy... "

"How could she do that?" Interrupted him, genuinely curious.

"Manipulating, saying that I was no good, I just wanted sex... Things with her. Things that girls in your age shouldn't do. Bad things... God things… Oh, God!"

It was at least cute the way Steve Harrington tried to omit the word sex from the conversation as if she didn't know what it was.

"Things that create other living creatures. Sex, you mean." She rested her head on the car seat, laughing slightly at the shock of Steve Harrington.

"Do you already know about these things? How old are you, girl?"

"Twelve years old, thank you very much. Do they teach that in schools, you know? Human reproduction and blah blah blah. Besides, my mom told me about everything when I asked why the people of All my children kept sucking each other's faces."

"Shouldn't she have said they were kissing and left that explanation for the future?"

"Good thinking. But my Mama wasn't inhibited by these things. Straight talk."

Terry Ives didn't often hide her stuff, always telling the truth, even if painful, when needed. Where do babies come from? Sex. Did you and my father love each other? It was a moment thing, just that. No love. Where do people go when they die? Mortuary, coffin, underground and then in the stomach of worms. This never traumatized El - or at least she believed that since she had not so far become one of those psychopathic movie children who also existed in real life - mainly because of these basic questions there was her favorite, the unchanging one: Do you love me, Mama? Ever.

After a while, El found out in the worst way that her mother wasn't as transparent as she made it seem, with more serious questions than where babies came from and so on.

"Your mother seemed like a nice person. Centered. Straight."

"She used to be."

Steve Harrington swallows audibly.

"Is she... is she dead? Did she go to heaven?"

"To heaven ?! What is it? Do you think she didn't tell me where people go when they die? She's just... just not here anymore." She muttered, looking out of the car just in time to spot a faded sign, almost fading into the foliage of a wild tree named after the local hospital.

"Shall we change the subject? Yes, let's change the subject. Yaay!" Steve makes a mini celebration probably trying to ease a tension he thought there was. "How are you doing in school? Are you one of the popular ones?"

El stared at the teenager in disbelief.

"I'm popular for taking purposeful jerks and bumps. Does that count? There's a boy, Troy, who stalks me and calls me by..."

"Carrie?" Steve suggests surprising her since that was exactly what the little school asshole cursed her about. "Oh man!"

She moved closer to find out why that reaction and then moaned as her arm hurt.

"Troy is my stepbrother. Just like Sarah is your stepsister." He explains. "We don't like each other."

"Because he's an asshole. Our half brothers are assholes."

"Yeah."

Talking to Steve Harrington was proving to be something truly enjoyable, but since everything enjoyable in El 's life couldn't last long, they were parking in front of Hawkins hospital - which meant A) her arm would be in a cast, that B) she would be taken back to Hopper's house and that C) her escape plan was definitely destroyed.

Steve Harrington's car had barely parked in the curb of the hospital entrance, between the ambulances and the cars of the others arriving, when Joyce, Will, and Jonathan materialized in front of the window, all with concerned expressions. Hopper is also there but keeps a healthy distance.

"Oh, darling!" Joyce opens the car door and pulls her into a hug. "We've been so worried about you. Steve, honey, thanks for calling us. It was very kind of you."

"No problem, Mrs. Hopper. Now, beware of her because..."

El howls loudly when Joyce accidentally pulls her to his chest and makes her press her fractured arm against her. It hurts like hell.

"El, honey, what's the matter?"

"What did you do to her, Harrington ?!" Jonathan asks imperatively pulling his mother and El out of Steve's car.

"I didn't do anything. When I found her she was already like that, with the fucking arm... broken."

"Something that wouldn't have happened if she hadn't tried to play spider woman and climb our roof." Jim Hopper's scolding voice comes closer to them, as does himself. "What happened to you, El? This kind of behavior is unacceptable to a young lady like you."

Of course, Hopper would start scolding her there in the middle of everyone! Ask if she was ok?! Why had she screamed a few seconds ago? Nonsense! The most important thing was to impose his authority! Douchebag. How had her mother managed to spend the night with that guy? Answer: She was too drunk to discern what she was doing, it could only have been that.

Protective, Joyce pulls her close and glares furiously at Hopper like a lioness mom would do to defend her babies.

"Don't talk to her like that, James Hopper! Do it and I assure you that your stay on the sofa will be very lasting." The woman caresses El 's hair. "She doesn't need this now. What she needs is a doctor. And we'll get it for you, sweetheart. Come on, yes. It'll be all right."

For some reason she can't explain, as soon as she hears the words "it's going to be all right," El loses control and starts crying wildly. It's not staging to escape the sermon - something she would do - it's just the overwhelming feeling reminding her that nothing would be right for her.

The broken arm could be cast and healed, but certain things in her life could never be healed. Never.

  



	5. The depth of the wounds no one can see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike meets some people from El's past.

Hawkins was a quiet town. So uneventful that any happening, of importance or not, attracted the curiosity of all its residents. When an owl attacked a girl’s head, confusing her curly hair for a nest, half the town showed up with opinions on which veterinary hospital the owl should attend for the best care. When a helicopter flew over the city at night, the onlookers were there to point their fingers and debate whether it was really an aircraft or whether it was actually Martians. When lightning struck in the middle of the forest, the gawkers gathered around the large black mark to speculate whether it was an act of nature, or a divine punishment upon mankind for their inadequacy.

So when Sherriff Hopper’s newly adopted daughter shows up to school with her arm in a cast, of course, the whole town is suddenly in a tizzy. Mike doesn’t subscribe to the small town’s habit of gossip, he doesn’t possess the same appetite for mundane information. However, in this case, it’s impossible not to be curious about what happened. The last time he saw El, she was traumatized after nearly drowning in Hawkins’ municipal pool, but she certainly didn’t have a broken arm then.

What the hell had happened to her?

Asking her directly wouldn’t be a good idea either, Mike realized from the moment she stepped in to school halls, arm in a cast, clothes rumpled (was unclear if you meant her clothes were rumpled because of her broken arm, if her clothes were mismatched on purpose as a style choice), and face full of despair. If she was introverted before, El would likely be the school hermit now. Fantastic!

"What happened to your stepsister?" It’s Lucas who asks the question, surprising everyone given his general rudeness towards El. "What? I can't be curious?"

"I thought Mike would be the first to ask." Dustin shrugs, working on one of the appliances in the room. "Since he has a crush on her. He even gave her a nickname.”

"Haha, Dustin! Very funny." He mocked, his cheeks burning.

  
“Oh, so it’s not true?”

  
Looking as fatigued as he had that one time he’d caught chickenpox, Will throws himself into one of the chairs in the AV room.

“She ran away from home and ended up breaking her arm in the process.”

Mike’s eyes widen, as do the other boys’, unsure if they just heard correctly.

“Good one, Byers!” Dustin claps Will on the back, eyes crinkling up as he laughs. “Very funny, indeed. See, Lucas? That is how you break the tension with a joke.”

"I don't think it's a joke, Dustin," Lucas says and Mike agrees.

"I think Will is serious."

"I am." Will nods, face serious. “She ran away from home, that’s how she broke her arm.”

Courtesy of the comics and fantasy novels he used to read (thank you very much, Batman and Harry Potter) Mike has a vivid imagination. But not even his imagination could have conjured up the series of events that Will relays to the three of them in the tiny AV room, far away from the curious ears of the other Hawkins children.

Mike is in shock. And not just about her broken arm and escape, but how it all happened – jumping out of Sarah’s bedroom window, scaling the roof, and climbing the support column of the house with all the skill and flare of Spider-Man. Not for the first time, he wonders what kind of life El led in Chicago that she knows how to do such things. She wasn’t one of those girly girls who lived for frilly skirts and fruity, pink things. But there was also nothing about her that indicated a need to know how to climb roofs and open doors with hairpins.

"Unbelievable!” One of the guys, he’s too distracted to distinguish which one, exclaims.

“I know! When my mom told me, I thought she was making it up. But then I saw her at the hospital…”

“She ended up at the hospital?”

  
“Of course she did! She has a cast on…” Will explains to the two friends who are paying attention. “Hopper is pissed at her. She’s grounded for two and a half months. Straight home from school and no violin.”

“And Sarah?” Lucas inquires with restrained curiosity. And why wasn't Mike surprised by this stupid question? "He grounded her too, didn't he?"

"As if my stepfather could do that." Will snorts. “She would just call her lawyer mother in New York and make herself out to be the victim.”

Mike rolls his eyes, not at all surprised by any of the information passed on by Will. But at the mention of Sarah’s mother a niggling question begins to form in the back of his mind. What about El's mother? If he investigated a little into El’s mother, maybe he could find out more about the life she led in Chicago.

“Her mother’s name,” Mike asks, before the idea and the courage can escape. “Do you know what her mother’s name is, Will?”

Perhaps his approach was not as subtle as he might have hoped. And now everyone is staring at him with wide eyes, stumped as to what he could be thinking to ask a question like that.

"El's mother." He insisted, not giving up. This could help. “Do you know anything about her? Her name? Anything?”

"She doesn't talk about her mother, Mike." He blew out a disappointed breath. “But this one time I think I overheard Hopper talking about someone named Terry Ives and if I’m not mistaken - ”

“- one of her last names is Ives.” He finished his friend’s thought, his inner detective roaring to life and grinning like a lunatic.

He ran to the nearest computer, a large, slightly old model. The boys huddle immediately behind him, curious, watching Mike's fingers fly across the white keyboard.

As expected when googling anything, no less than a thousand results for the name Terry Ives pop up on the screen. A lot of information is in front of them, but Mike’s attention is caught by the images that appeared along with the results, specifically, the photo in which El appears. Looking not much older than Holly is today, the little El in the photo smiles happily next to a beautiful blonde woman, whose hands are busy with a violin. Studying the background environment, Mike tries to distinguish whether they are in the United States or not…

His search for any clue he could construct from the details of the photo – for example, the elegant and expensive looking blue dress worn by the woman he assumed was El’s mother, the backdrop looks like an old, though well cared for, theater – is disrupted by the unmistakable sound of an ongoing commotion that begins outside the AV room.

Mike doesn’t rush to see what’s going on, not until the boys, all huddled around the only exit, start babbling among themselves like a pack of wild hyenas.

"Oh shit! Shit! Shit!"

"Dude, that's..."

"I know it's her, man! I’m pretty sure I could recognize her anywhere considering I stare at that mop of curls during lunch every day. Oh, man, this can't be happening."

“She has a broken arm, can’t they just leave her alone?!”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

"Dude, they're like the empousai."

  
The phrase broken arm is what diverts Mike’s attention away from the computer to the boys crowded in the doorway – Dustin panicking, Lucas rolling his eyes in annoyance and Will…Will’s cheeks were flushed with a furious shade of red.

“What’s going on, guys?” He turned in the chair he was sat in.

“Stacey, Jennifer, Troy and James are doing what they do best.” Dustin summarizes what he’s been watching for the last few minutes. “And this time their target is Will’s sister.”

“Man, why can’t they show just a little respect?” Will laments, leaning forward a little. “She has a broken arm!”

“I think her broken arm is the cause, here.”

Without hesitation Mike pushes himself out of his chair and runs, squeezing through his best friends, trying to see what the hell was going on that involved El. That Troy Harrington has no boundaries was nothing new to any of the Hawkins public school outcasts. It was nothing new, but Mike couldn’t believe he was stupid enough to be picking on a girl with a busted up arm.

But, unfortunately, that was exactly what was happening; Troy was enough of an asshole to do it, Mike is about to discover when, after laboriously squeezing himself through the crowd of boys (Seriously, would he ever be taller than his friends? It would be lovely to not have to be on tip toe to see anything), he finally is able to see exactly what it is that is stirring up the students so much.

El is there, pushed up against her locker, a mix of bewildered and angry as she looks down at her books scattered across the floor – books Mike had seen her organizing with one hand earlier that same morning. Troy and his gang are there too, surrounding her, but for once he isn’t in the spotlight this time. This time, the spotlight is on Stacey, who appears to be leading the operation with her obnoxiously bright shoes, surrounding El as if she’s a cornered animal about to be devoured.

However, if El is meant to be intimidated by this, it’s not working. Furious to the point of strangling someone? Absolutely. Frightened by the flock of students around her? Not even a little.

"How did you break your arm, weirdo?" Stacey asks, grabbing at El’s cast, then hissing when El said nothing in response. “Aren’t you going to answer? Did you go deaf when you broke your arm?”

Where they stood in the doorway was like a VIP box for the show. They watched El easily snatch her arm away from Stacey’s grasp.

  
“If you’re too stupid to realize that it’s impossible to go deaf from breaking your arm,” El’s pink lips move imperceptibly, “Then you’re too stupid to realize that I’m not going to tell you anything.”

"Holy..." Dustin begins the exclamation and Lucas finishes for him. "Shit!"

Lucas and Dustin’s exclamation echoes down the corridor lined with students, giving voice to those who didn’t dare speak in that moment. Well everyone in the corridor (even Troy) is lost in the shock of the moment, Mike is in awe of El’s sharp tongue, her supply of clever comebacks – not that he was ever on the receiving end of them, thank goodness.

Stacey clearly doesn’t like this answer, but her anticipated response isn’t exactly what anyone was expecting. She doesn’t shriek or kick or give El a deadly look. No. She pushes El hard, throwing her down onto the books scattered across the floor.

“What did you say, weirdo?”

Stacey’s gold sneaker swings close to El’s nose, nearly hitting her in the face.

"I asked how you broke your arm, weirdo," Stacey yells, face turning red - and losing its characteristic beauty. “Are you going to answer me or not?

Wide-eyed, Mike watches as a worried Jennifer Hayes puts a hand on Stacey’s shoulder.

“Stacey, don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little?”

“No, I don’t!” Stacey stomps down on one of El’s books. “I’m not overdoing it at all! I’m just asking this brat to tell me how she broke her fucking arm!”

"Go on, Carrie." Troy coaxes with an arrogant smirk. “Tell her how you broke your arm and get it over with.”

El rolls her eyes, anger and resentment growing on her face with each passing minute.

There is so much rage in her posture, in her face and eyes that Mike thinks that even with an injured arm, at any moment should could easily tear Stacey to shreds until there’s nothing left of her but the blonde strands of the snobbish girl who has been tormenting her.

Still pointedly silent, El begins to gather the books that are spread out on the floor with one hand, an act that makes Mike want to go help her. Heck, he’d been in that exact same vulnerable position many times and knew anyone’s offered help was a comfort.

"Where do you think you're going?"

After a failed attempt to squeeze himself past his friends to reach the hallway, Mike halts at Lucas’s slightly aggressive words. It didn’t take long for him to realize that the scolding wasn’t directed at him, that Lucas hadn’t seen him trying to go to El because he was too busy watching Will attempt to do just that, trying the help the powerless girl.

Oh! Will was trying to go help El too. It was surprising considering he rarely spoke to or showed any kind of affection towards her. But that’s how it is. People are full of surprises.

“I’m trying to help El!” Will tries to pass, again being barred by Lucas. "What the hell Lucas?!"

“You’re not going over there, man. And that goes for you too, Mike." Lucas puffs out his chest with authority. “If you go over there, the only thing that will happen is Troy turning on you instead. They don’t like anyone who interferes with them, you know that.”

"So I'm going to let them humiliate my sister? You mocking her has to end, ok?”

“Who says I’m mocking? Argh, I hate to admit it, but I kind of respect her after the whole pool thing.” Lucas shrugs, more casual than he should be. “But that doesn’t change the fact that none of you should go over there.”

"And why not?" Mike tries to get a glimpse of what's going on outside, vision being obscured by Dustin's frozen figure - he doesn't even seem to be listening to the argument.

"We're nerds! If any of us go out there to help her... Well, then we’ll just need someone to help us.” He gestures to illustrate his point. “Troy will destroy us.”

"Hmmm, guys?" Dustin interrupts as Mike his about to argue back Lucas’s point. “I don’t think El will need our help.”

"What?"

"Someone is already helping her." The curly boy’s voice takes on a slight tone of confusion. "And I don't think I've ever seen this guy before. Who is that?"

El is still down on the floor when Mike makes it back to the door, but now she’s accompanied by someone who is helping her. A boy in a faded denim jacket, face hidden as he had his back to the AV room, is crouching before her, gathering the books that are scattered on the ground.

(And what the hell is this resentment that begins to build a fortress in Mike’s chest when he sees him? He should be glad someone stepped up to help El, not be feeling upset or betrayed. He had no right to feel that way)

Despite receiving aid, El doesn’t seem to be too happy about it. She seems furious at the boy helping her, who in turn seems completely indifferent to her fury as he berates Stacey and the others.

“…Do you think you are, treating her this way?” The boy shouts at everyone around him, angry. “Stupid bumpkins. Bratty rich kids, think you’re better than everyone else just because you have some money.”

"And where did you come from, freak?!" Stacey stepped back a little, grabbing Jennifer’s hand.

“And who are you, loser?” Troy challenges the boy, looking like he’s about to swing a kick. “You look like one of those beggars from New York.”

“Haha, so funny for a country bumpkin.”

The unknown boy gathers up El’s books into a single pile and hoists them into his arms, looking calm, and pushes the stack into El’s locker, not breaking his stare on Troy and his companions. He is tall, with Sam Winchester-style flowing brown hair adorning his haughty face and clothes…Clothes that would look messy on Mike, but on this stranger they were extremely cool.

"You fancy yourself, don't you? Just because Daddy and Mommy have some money you think you’re the king, queen, and princess of the world. You’re a bunch of nothings, dimwitted, mediocre rich kids who treat others like garbage because no one loves you at home.” The boy berates them all as he helps El to her feet. “If this were Chicago, I swear to god I would…”

Mike doesn’t miss the way the boy pulls El close to him with an intense level of intimacy.

“You’d do what, freak?”

"I would make you swallow those crooked teeth and then puke them up."

"Danny!" El exclaims the name Mike assumes is the boy’s. "Stop, please..."

“I’d like to see you try, stranger!” Troy challenges by stepping in front of Stacey and Jennifer. “I would kill you.”

“You piece of shit…”

"Daniel!"

“EXCUSE ME, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”

Mike doesn’t see the Principle coming, just sees storming rush of children running this way and that, fleeing to hide themselves from the wrath in his voice. El and the weird boy do the same – he takes her good hand in his and pulls her away from trouble. The two of them disappear into the crowd, the only clue to their whereabouts being the fact that they both ran out of the school.

"He took her." He said turning to his friends. "Gone. Poof! They’re gone."

No one seems more alarmed than Will, whose greenish eyes are wide as he starts pacing.

"Did a stranger take my sister? Was that, like, a kidnapping? A kidnapping in our school? Did my sister just get kidnapped?” He pulls at his brown hair. "Oh man! Oh man! Fuck! Which way did they go?"

"I think toward the exit, Will..."

  
Acting more concerned than expected for someone so distant from his from his stepsister, Will escapes through the door to look for her. Like the good friends that they are (and also being just a little curious), they follow closely behind him.

It’s not an impressive procession, sneaking in between students, trying to dodge them, nothing compared to those televised races where the competition is over so quickly that it shouldn’t even be possible. But for the nerds that they were, it was an exceptional race. Fast and tiring enough that by the time they reached the main exit of the school, they were panting and flushed from the effort.

Squinting, Mike sees El and the strange boy arguing on the school steps. They are close enough to be heard, but apparently El and the stranger are too busy to notice them – their attention is solely on their dispute.

"...I don't need you to fight for me, Daniel!" El pushes the unknown boy with her unbroken hand. “And by the way, what the hell are you even doing here, idiot!”

"I came to see you, little canary. I heard you broke your arm." The boy, Daniel, points to the plaster on her arm. "Can I sign your cast?"

"No, idiot! Now get out of my sight."

“What’s going on, Jane? Why are you treating me like this? I thought I was your crush?”

Automatically, as if underwater, Mike holds his breath at that information. Did El have a crush on that boy whom Mike now saw as annoying for some reason? What terrible taste she must have.

  
(That was the same thought Mike would have every time he saw her kissing another guy in the future. No other guy would ever be right for her in his mind.)

Mike only lets out the air he's been holding in his lungs when El, with an unknown disdain for him, starts laughing. Mike only lets out the air he’s been holding in his lungs when El, with a look of disdain towards him, begins to laugh.

“Yeah, Danny, my heart is yours.” She jokes. “Never gonna happen, loser.”

“Fine, fine. Anyways, I didn’t come here to discuss that.” Danny shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “Do you know how mad Kali is? I came with her…”

El jumps slightly as Mike's mind binds the name to the person she had been trying to call the other day.

"Is Kali here?"

"Oh damn it! I shouldn't have told you that." Danny runs his hand through his hair, looking away from El's face and turning to the school entrance. “Oh, more gawkers, huh?” He asks rhetorically when he notices them. "This city sucks. This city sucks. What do you want? Do you gawking losers just spring up out of the ground?”

"What's your problem, asshole?"

He crossed his arms over his puffed out chest. If Mike had been grateful to this boy for helping El with her books and defending her a few minutes ago, now he simply hated him. Who did this arrogant boy with a cool accent and cool clothes think he was, talking to them like that?

Looking exasperated, El rests her hand on the boy in the cool clothes. Of course, the two of them already knew each other, they clearly had some sort of history, and consequently, enough intimacy for her to give him orders to back off.

"Control your testosterone, guys. Danny, these are…” She hesitates a little, searching for the right words. "My friends, I think. Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Will, my father’s stepson."

"I'm her brother," Will states, and it might be Mike's imagination, but he could have sworn he noticed a little pride in his friend's voice. "What do you want with my sister?"

Danny, whose last name didn't matter to Mike enough for him to ask, begins to laugh with such obvious disdain that Will blushes, embarrassed.

"Your friends, Jane?! Seriously? You need better friends!" The boy laughs with scorn, an undertone of malice in his voice. “I saw them, ok? I saw these four losers hiding away as those morons said horrible things to you…They’re not your friends…”

"Danny!" El scolded harshly, pinching him on his arm. "Enough taunting. Just... Just stop it. Let it go."

"Let it go? Oh, I won't let it go. You'll be avenged."

"Daniel!"

"Alright, I'll be quiet."

(But weeks later, when James, Troy, Jennifer and Stacey suffer an unexpected bath of blue and green paint on their way out of school, Mike realizes Daniel had no intention of letting it go like El wanted. It’s a pleasant sight to see those bullies drenched in ink, nearly as humiliated as they had made him feel many times in the past. But it can’t be a complete pleasure, considering Mike dislikes the person who exacted the revenge.)

The boy with Sam Winchester hair snorts indignantly but falls quiet – something that doesn’t completely appease El, but is enough to lessen the exasperation exposed in her frown.

She introduces the boy, Daniel “Danny” Hope, without looking at any of them, still frowning as her eyes roamed the school entrance looking for something beyond Mike's imagination.

"Okay, what are you doing so far from Chicago?" Lucas asks Danny directly, his voice sounding serious and slightly protective. “What are you doing in this bumpkin town?”

"I came to see my girl, I heard she broke her arm." Danny pulls El close, with a confident smile. “By the way, can I sign your cast, Janey? I’ve never signed anyone’s cast before.”

"No one's going to sign my cast, Daniel." She breaks free of his touch and Mike feels a twinge of joy at it. "What is she doing here?"

"Who?"

"Kali, Daniel!"

Danny's eyes widen, something that gives both Mike and the other boys a chance to realize that unlike them, his eyes aren't one color. Blue and green. Two colors. Heterochromia, Mike had already covered it in biology.

“Hmmm, about that. She came here to talk to your dad.” The boy scratches the back of his neck. "She's mad. Dottie is mad too."

After spending so much time observing El’s every response and change of expression to figure out how she felt, Mike can tell that she completely disconnects from the real world before the other boy’s sentence ends, lost in her own world and in her own plans.

"Is she with Hopper, at the police station?"

"Yes? Janey..."

"Don't call me that anymore, do you understand me? My name is now El." Mike’s chest inflates at her words, mainly because she looks directly into his eyes as she does so. "Can you take me to the police station? A ride on the back of your bike, please?"

"Jane..."

"Mike? Can you take me there?" El insists looking at him with big doe eyes

It would have been better for him to take a moment and consider the request, whether it was a good idea to abandon his plans to take El to someone who, in her last attempt in contacting her, had slammed the phone in her face, but…But that’s not what he does. Even with the thought deep in his mind that at that moment he looks more like an obedient dog, eager to please his owner, he nods his head. That would surely get some comments from the guys later, definitely, but Danny’s annoyed face was more than enough payment to endure the comments later.

She’s a silent presence on the bike seat that was already getting too small and flimsy for a twelve-year-old, her warm hands resting firmly against the junction of his ribs. Mike can tell El is upset about something; her silence makes it clear to any careful observer. And something in that silence leads him to believe that her annoyance isn’t directed at Kali (whoever she is), or her snobbish friend, or the school bullies – it’s directed at him. It scares him because if she really is angry, why doesn’t she say anything, put everything out there?

What the hell could he have done? Not that it was something to brag about, but he was practically acting as a personal taxi service to her. This wasn’t right. The only possibly wrong thing he had done was to stay in the AV room while she was humiliated before much of the student body, doing nothing to help her.

"Listen, El" He turned the corner of the station. "What your friend said, about us not being your friends and watching everything happen..."

"It's fine, Mike."

"No, it's not!"

"I'm not upset with you guys." There is a pause where the breath on his back gets a little more agitated. “You have no obligation to be defending me or taking care of me at school. I’m a friend of yours, if what we have here is really a friendship, I have very little time for these things anyways. So take care of yourself, ‘cause believe it or not, I can take care of myself just fine.”

The big little speech, plus the fact that he knew when a girl says it’s fine, nothing is fine, tells Mike she’s really upset.

"I consider you my friend." He muttered, stopping in front of the police station, focusing on a certain part of her speech. "Really."

“That’s cute. You’re cute." She responds when he helps her off the bike, moaning when there is a brief bump between her cast against his chest. "Really."

Cute is an adjective very often used by girls, and Mike didn’t like the idea of identifying with that adjective when it came to his friendship with El. This wasn’t what he wanted.

The adjective, while not so unpleasant, but also not what he wanted to hear, quickly flees Mike’s mind when he, accompanying El, sees the two women with colored hair arguing with Hopper just outside the police station, next to the secretary.

Like Danny, they neither seemed to fit the small-town standards. They looked dangerous in their leather jackets and torn clothes, unlike anything Mike had ever seen in his life. One was small, purple hair shaved on one side, and the other a little taller and also more unstable (she had a certain air of madness about her), blonde with a few spots of green and pink dyed in.

Hopper, face red and mustache moving, argues with both of them without bothering to tell off the other cops who are watching everything. For the second time today no one notices Mike right away, this time in the company of El.

"...thought the girl would be safe here with you, far from danger since she would be with her father!" The purple-haired woman says, on the edge of hysterical screams. "And what happens? She almost drowns and, in less than an hour, breaks her fucking arm! What kind of father are you?"

"Is my girl all right?" The colorful-haired blonde asks anxiously. "Are you taking good care of her arm?"

"Haven’t you ever heard that children are accident prone?" Hopper ignores the colored-haired woman's question to look at the purple-haired one. "That's exactly what happened! An accident!"

The two women shake, faces becoming deformed in joint fury.

"THAT FUCKING ACCIDENT ALMOST KILLED HER!"

“WHAT KIND OF IDIOT LETS THEIR DAUGHTER NEARLY DROWN AND, RIGHT AFTER, BREAK HER ARM? WHAT KIND OF FATHER ARE YOU? WHAT ABOUT HER MEDICATION? DID YOU BUY HER MEDICATION? CAN YOU IMAGINE THE NEXT ACCIDENT TO HAPPEN? 'CAUSE I CAN. SHE COULD HAVE AN ASTHMA ATTACK AND DIE! SHE COULD HAVE A NOSE BLEED AND DIE, AND IF MY LITTLE CANARY DIES I WILL…”

“YOU KNOW I CAN ARREST YOU TWO FOR INTERFERRING WITH POLICE ACTIVITY. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU CITY RATS HAVE TO COME HERE AND ACT THIS WAY?”

He turned to El to see if she was as scared as he was and found something in her face that didn't fit the definition of "scared." Emotional, maybe? Her eyes shining with suppressed tears seemed to fit that description. Shaken? Her pale face fit that too. In disbelief? Well, something in her expression, maybe her trembling lip, fit that, too.

Either way, no matter how she was feeling, seeing these women and her father screaming madly at each other, it was clear that it hadn’t been a good idea to bring her here. It wasn’t doing her any good.

“So what, you’re going to arrest me because I told the truth, that you’re a fucking terrible father?” The angry woman advances to get in Hopper’s face. “WELL THE TRUTH HURTS!”

"Can anyone tell me how she is? Is she recovering alright?”

"I'm fine, Dotts," El speaks so softly that Mike almost believes it was his mind. “Thank you for caring.”

The three combatants immediately shut up, turning to where the voice came from and fixing their eyes there. The stares aren’t directed completely at him, but that doesn’t stop Mike from blushing profusely, hating being in the spotlight with El.

Hopper and the purple-haired woman do not seem happy to see that El is there, unlike the other woman, who shouts in delight and rushes to hug her tight. Mike feels like an intruder right now, in a situation that he really shouldn’t be in, but since he is there, leaving El alone isn't a good option - even though at the moment she seems to be receiving very affectionate treatment.

"How did you grow up in such a short time, little bird?" Dotts mutters still squeezing El. ”This isn’t ok.”

"I'm sorry?"

  
“Well you should be! Here! I brought you a present, dear." The woman steps away to fumble in the pocket of the large jacket she wears and ends up pulling out a medal whose pendant Mike can't see very well. "For you to always remember me by."

“I would remember better if you came to visit me.” El tries to persuade her, her voice sounding watery. "Or call me more."

“I’m sorry, little bird, but Kali won’t let me. I almost can't see you..."

Mike turns his attention to the short woman with the purple hair: Kali. She has been arguing with Hopper, face still twisted in disgust.

"The intention of leaving Jane here with you was for her to have a stable life - no worries and no dangers because she would be with her family," Kali argues with Hopper, hands outstretched on the counter. "Now, I believe breaking her arm, almost drowning and trying to run away from home aren't synonymous with that, or am I mistaken? Do I need to teach you how to be a father?”

"It was an accident, kid, something that will never happen again. Not that you have to worry since she is my daughter. She's nothing yours. You are nothing to her." Hopper says harshly, almost as if he were talking about Sarah and not about El.

"Ah, I do not intend to continue worrying about this child because, as you said yourself, I am nothing to her." The woman speaks, and damn it, even Mike can feel the shards of ice and glass in her voice. "I'll never play your daughter's nanny again, you’ll never have to worry about that.”

Their conversation ends with that, and without a goodbye or farewell nod, Kali marches past Hopper and over to Mike and the woman who has been holding El firmly since she realized the direction of the conversation.

"Kali..." Dotts hugs El protectively, preventing Mike from seeing her face.

"Come on, Dottie." The woman avoids looking at El as if the poor girl were some kind of leper. “Let’s go, or you’re getting back to Chicago by bus alone because I won’t be waiting around for you to be sentimental.”

“Aren’t you at least going to say ‘hi El’? Or say hi to her little friend?

Mike flinches at the mention, not liking the way the punk woman looks at him - almost as if she could rip his insides out and eat them roasted over a slow fire.

"Let's get out of this garbage shoot, Dottie! Everyone here is a crook.”

In contrast to her punk rock outfits, Kali tosses her hair over her shoulder with patrician disdain and marches out of the station without hesitating or looking at El. An onlooker might have thought she hated El.

"I'll try to get in touch, little bird." Mike listens to the woman promise to El. "Swear."

She doesn't answer, staying in a perpetual silence until the woman enters the van parked in front of the police station and drives away. She's unresponsive enough that Mike gets goosebumps on the back of his neck, trying to figure out what's going on in her head.

Nonsense! He didn't have to imagine much to get an answer. If she was upset before, she was now at the pinnacle of upset. That woman, the one who had implied that she had taken care of El while she was living in Chicago, who had come to Hawkins to scream at Hopper for the accident that had befallen El, had blatantly ignored her in the worst way that a person could. She was cold as ice, a heartbreaker, and man, she had completely and totally broken El’s heart. Damn, Mike himself was heartbroken. Not as much as she was, but as much as empathy allowed.

(This the first of many times she would break his heart, empathetically or not. That was just it: Mike Wheeler’s heart, but he would not realize it anytime soon, was and always would be at El Hopper’s mercy.)

El sits on the steps, head down. And Mike, whose only experience in comforting someone was to pull his little sister onto his lap while she openly cries, sits beside her. At least she wouldn’t be sad alone.

"Listen, I'm..."

"Want to write on my cast?" She interrupts what he's sure could be the worst words of comfort in the universe. "Anything? A scribble or something?"

He blinked. Of all the things he hoped El would say — or cry or curse — this was the least expected, especially because earlier she had almost beaten up his friend for asking exactly that.

“Isn’t that what a friend does when their friend break a bone and gets a cast?” Mike shudders as he hears the increasingly obvious tremble in her voice. Was she about to cry? Oh man! "Fine, if you don't want to..."

"I’ll sign it, I’ll sign it, I’ll sign it!" He exclaimed in desperation. He didn't want her to cry and if signing the cast would keep her from crying, then that's what he would do.

Nervously, he removed the pen he kept in his jeans pocket in case of emergency boredom and scribbled on her cast.

**Smile :)**

She felt like a gooey idiot as she read what he wrote, her sense of self-pity evaporating. Mike watched as, beneath those short, messy curls, a small smile begins to rise on El’s lips. Not exactly happy, still a little melancholy, and controlled well, but still a smile.

"You're a nice guy, Mike Wheeler." She speaks softly, still tearfully, before resting her head on his shoulder. "Too nice for your own good."

Mike doesn't quite understand what El means by him being too cool for his own good, but he isn’t too concerned about the symbolism of those words, not when she's there, close to him, with her head propped up against his shoulder. Nothing seemed to matter much at the moment, at least for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I think in this chapter it was very clear that there was a change, right? And that change is thanks to TheComplex kind help. I will never tire of thanking you for your kindness in being available to help me and improve my story as 1000%.
> 
> Let's go to a little spoiler from the next chapter: Max Mayfield. I will say nothing more. Just that.
> 
> Kisses 😘❤

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, you, wonderful and tough person who managed to get to the end of the prologue. I am grateful for your patience in reading what I have written and hopeful with the idea that you will continue to gratify me with your virtual presence and, perhaps, occasional comments.
> 
> Kisses ❤


End file.
